Science and Politics; Tort Reform for Liberals?

An interesting effort to remove some politicization from science in government.

Tucked inside the current funding bill for the Department of Health and Human Services is a little-noticed provision that regulates how the department handles science and scientific advice. None of the money in the bill can be used “to disseminate scientific information that is deliberately false or misleading,” the provision says. And the department cannot ask candidates for its scientific advisory panels to disclose their political affiliation or voting history.

The effort is termed part of a response to what is perceived to be a hostility to science in the Bush administration.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how one might frame an alternative to traditional tort reform efforts as part of the same response — focusing efforts on improving the use (and reducing the abuse) of science in tort litigation. 

My view from work on the defense side in pharmaceutical tort litigation was that many of the most problematic claims would have been eliminated if there was a real filter on expert testimony — so that, for example, local doctors with no relevant background or experience wouldn’t be testifying about FDA regulations, or so that theories without an iota of support in the literature or the proof in the case wouldn’t be presented.  If you knock those claims out, the problems of inventory settlements get much smaller.

“Tort reform for liberals,” one might call an approach trying to give teeth to the evidentiary rules (I almost said hurdles, but hurdles with teeth is an unpleasant image), and it could be framed as a way of having all aspects of government be evidence-based.  Such an approach might be more appealing to people like me, who are skeptical of the need for, value of, or fairness of things like caps on damages, but who are also significantly concerned about the way mass torts in particular play out, with unimpaired plaintiffs driving the bus.

Thoughts?