According to Google ngram, the phrase “junk science” made its debut circa 1975, lagging junk food by about five years. See “The Rise and Rise of Junk Science” (Mar. 8, 2014). I have never much like the phrase “junk science” because it suggests that courts need only be wary of the absurd and ridiculous in their gatekeeping function. Some expert witness opinions are, in fact, serious scientific contributions, just not worthy of being advanced as scientific conclusions. Perhaps better than “junk” would be patho-epistemologic opinions, or maybe even wissenschmutz, but even these terms might obscure that the opinion that needs to be excluded derives from serious scientific, only it is not ready to be held forth as a scientific conclusion that can be colorably called knowledge.
Another formulation of my term, patho-epistemology, is the Eleventh Circuit’s lovely “Contrivance Standard.” Rink v. Cheminova, Inc., 400 F.3d 1286, 1293 & n.7 (11th Cir. 2005). In Rink, the appellate court held that the district court had acted within its discretion to exclude expert witness testimony because it had properly confined its focus to the challenged expert witness’s methodology, not his credibility:
“In evaluating the reliability of an expert’s method, however, a district court may properly consider whether the expert’s methodology has been contrived to reach a particular result. See Joiner, 522 U.S. at 146, 118 S.Ct. at 519 (affirming exclusion of testimony where the methodology was called into question because an “analytical gap” existed “between the data and the opinion proffered”); see also Elcock v. Kmart Corp., 233 F.3d 734, 748 (3d Cir. 2000) (questioning the methodology of an expert because his “novel synthesis” of two accepted methodologies allowed the expert to ”offer a subjective judgment … in the guise of a reliable expert opinion”).”
Note the resistance, however, to the Supreme Court’s mandate of gatekeeping. District courts must apply the statutes, Rule of Evidence 702 and 703. There is no legal authority for the suggestion that a district court “may properly consider wither the expert’s methodology has been contrived.” Rink, 400 F.3d at 1293 n.7 (emphasis added).
