Be sure to catch the latest article from CPR member scholar Lisa Heinzerling, "Doubting Daubert, forthcoming in the Brooklyn Journal of Law & Policy. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme Court announced that it was liberalizing the rules on admissibility of expert scientific evidence by rejecting a requirement that such evidence be generally accepted in the scientific community. Daubert has had, Heinzerling notes, just the opposite effect from the one the Court said it intended. Among other reasons:

According to the New York Times, EPA has withheld a report showing that due to loopholes in fuel efficiency standards, manufacturers have been allowed to produce cars that, on average, are significantly less fuel efficient than cars sold in the late 1980s. The loopholes give car manufacturers credits towards their fuel economy standards if they produce dual-fuel cars in their fleet—those that can run on both ethanol blend and gasoline. The credit then allows the manufacturers to add more inefficient cars such as SUVs and trucks to their fleet.

The Environmental Working Group unveiled a stunning report of new scientific research in the chemicals to which babies are exposed in utero. Scientists used to assume that the placenta shielded the developing baby from most chemical exposures, but studies drawn from cord blood reveal something quite different: