Judging Science: The Historian, the Courts, & Discerning Responsibility for Environmental Pollution

Over the past twenty years a vast public negotiation has taken place over the causes of, and responsibility for, disease. For the most part this discussion has flown under the radar of doctors, historians and public health professionals. To the extent they have participated, professionals and scholars have been called in as “experts,” as witnesses, to be either listened to, or rejected, by juries and judges.

This talk will look at a number of cases over the course of the past two decades in which Professor Rosner has participated. The talk will place his experience in the context of a much longer history of how courts have been used and abused in a contentious struggle over the health of working people and consumers faced by occupational and environmental dangers.

David Rosner – Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of History Columbia University

Event is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served.  The event is sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in Collaboration with the Center for Justice at Columbia University.