Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and the Law (Hardcover)

~ Kenneth R. Foster (Editor), David E. Bernstein (Editor), Peter W. Huber (Editor) "Risk in technical usage is the probability that a person will experience an adverse effect from some activity or exposure..." (more)
Key Phrases: dietary avg, wiring configuration code, dozen epidemiologic studies, New York, United States, Agent Orange (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Phantom Risk is a much needed antidote for the hysteria over low-level insult that pervades and debilitates our society."
—Alvin M. Weinberg, Distinguished Fellow, Oak Ridge Associated Universities --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

Phantom risks are risks whose very existence is unproven and perhaps unprovable, yet they raise real problems at the interface of science and the law. Phantom Risk surveys a dozen scientific issues that have led to public controversy and litigation - among them, miscarriage from the use of video display terminals, birth defects in children whose mothers used the drug Bendectin, and cancer from low-intensity magnetic fields, and from airborne asbestos. It presents the scientific evidence behind these and other issues and summarizes the resulting litigation. Focusing on the great disparity between the scientific evidence that is sufficient to arouse public fears and that needed to establish a hazard or its absence, these original contributions probe the problem of scientific ambiguity in risk assessment, and the mayhem this creates in the courtroom. Although the authors are clearly optimistic about the use of science to detect and evaluate risks, they recognize the difficulty of inferring cause-and-effect relationships from epidemiological (observational) evidence and of inferring risks to humans from high-dose animal experiments, the two major sources of evidence. The final chapter reviews the exceptionally difficult problem of how the legal impact of disputes about phantom risks can be reduced. Kenneth R. Foster is Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. David E. Bernstein is an attorney at the law firm of Crowell & Moring. Peter W. Huber is a Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and serves as Counsel to the law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 469 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; illustrated edition edition (June 4, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262061562
• ISBN-13: 978-0262061568
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,566,852 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)