Judges Privilege Consensus Over Testing

A major federal judicial manual's new guidance reframes 'how science works' to emphasize community acceptance and model‑based inference rather than hypothesis testing and falsifiability. Because judges rely on that manual to decide admissibility, the change risks making litigation outcomes depend more on which scientific communities and models are institutionalized than on direct experimental or observational proof. — If courts begin to treat consensus and models as the decisive proof, liability, regulatory, and public‑health cases will turn on institutional alliances and model selection rather than on testable evidence, reshaping policy and public trust.