Ethnography and the Idealized Accounts of Science in Law

Abstract:     
An idealized description of scientific activity persists in law and legal literature. Social aspects of science are regularly acknowledged and then dismissed as temporary, irrelevant, or eliminable. A distinction should be made between eliminable and inevitable social aspects of science, and engagement with the latter would lead to a more accurate description of the scientific enterprise. After explaining how ethnomethodology is used to explore the inevitable social, institutional, and rhetorical aspects of science, I identify numerous social aspects and suggest how understanding their role in the production of scientific knowledge might help attorneys and judges in their evaluations of scientific validity.

Accepted Paper Series