A chapter titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science” was removed from the online version of the Fourth Edition Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence after a group of 27 Republican state attorneys general called it “biased” and demanded its removal. The nearly 1,700-page manual has been published by the Federal Judicial Center since 1994 and is widely used by judges when considering scientific evidence in fields in which they are not experts.
The two most recent versions were developed with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which defended the newly added chapter and has not deleted it from its website. The chapter, which underwent extensive review by scientists, judges, and other experts, explains the fundamentals of climate science and the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change while acknowledging areas of disagreement or uncertainty.
28 science, technology, and legal experts who contributed to the manual criticized its withdrawal, writing in a letter that “[o]mitting the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual deprives judges of a carefully reviewed baseline explanation of the relevant science. It leaves judges without a tool to evaluate the parties’ framing, sometimes cherry-picked literature, and adversarially hired and paid witnesses.”
The climate science chapter was written by two experts affiliated with Columbia University. One of the authors is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Sabin Center.