The rules of evidence

We all know that when he was a youth Albert Einstein was a poor student who failed mathematics in school, right? It’s commonly known and sometimes comforts the mathematically challenged. There’s just one problem. It’s not true. In fact, Einstein’s scholastic record was one of uninterrupted brilliance. He was top of his classes from first to last. He mastered differential and integral calculus by the time he was 15. Yet the belief persists.

It is true that the infant Einstein was late in verbal development. But that lone fact has propagated many false myths about the man that have become ossified in human culture. My small correction, and the corrections of others, will have little impact on its gravitational attraction.

Such false beliefs in and of themselves usually do little harm. Einstein himself was aware of it and amused by it. But the overall human tendency to embrace untruths so easily is disturbing, and too often leads to great evil.

For example, it is widely believed that vaccines cause autism. But there isn’t a shred of scientific evidence to support this. Fraudulent research claiming a link between autism and vaccines was originated by British ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield. And yet despite its being thoroughly discredited, the lie persists and will not die. Because the myth persists, many parents refuse to have their children vaccinated. And thanks to Wakefield’s lie, measles are making a deadly comeback. According to the World Health Organization, measles cases increased by 79% in 2023. In 2022 alone, the WHO estimated that measles killed more than 130,000 people — most of them children.

Such deadly lies are easy to create and hard to kill. Such lies are the number one cause of human misery today. They lead to rampant ignorance, everything from lies about global warming to false myths about the government’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic. Such lies got Donald Trump elected president.

Fortunately there are at least two environments in which deadly lies cannot easily survive. One is in the scientific laboratory. Another is the American judicial system.

Before you laugh, let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine if Donald Trump’s current criminal case was being tried, not in an American court of law, but in the Republican-led Congress. I don’t need to tell you what you already know. There would be no discussion about an eventual guilty verdict. Trump’s acquittal would be a fait accompli.

Of course I know the American judicial system isn’t perfect. The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision on Dobbs v Jackson effectively rescinded Roe v Wade. The shenanigans of Judge Aileen Cannon are well-known. But just as the scientific community allowed a psychopath like Andrew Wakefield to hold brief sway, the American judicial system also has its imperfections. Nevertheless, as with the scientific community, the overall trajectory of the American judicial system is upward and self-correcting.

Why is this so? Because of the rules of evidence. Evidence is required in a court of law, and lack of evidence in the assertion of a claim soon becomes fatal. For example, though the myth that Einstein failed mathematics might hold an imperishable sway over the public imagination, it wouldn’t survive very long in a court of law.

In the movie “The Verdict” Paul Newman’s character observes that the legal system doesn’t provide a guarantee of justice, but it does provide a chance of justice. Again, tried in the Republican-led Congress, Trump’s current criminal case would have no chance at all of justice. Tried in a court of law justice has a very good chance indeed.

Just as the scientific method usually leads to scientific truth in the laboratory, the rules of evidence usually lead to truth in the courtroom. Of course both are imperfect because they are governed by imperfect human beings. But they are the best systems we have just now, and they work far more often than they fail. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.