Free speech in the fog of scientific uncertainty

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s assault on journalistic integrity and shared verifiable facts has ignited a reaction among public intellectuals to demand fealty to scientific truth. Unfortunately, the reaction, like so many produced in the haste of political controversy, has oversimplified and overcorrected for the problem.

One common assumption within the resistance is that existing systems for regulating scientific claims are self-evidently wise. My new article, “Snake Oil“ (forthcoming in the Washington Law Review), is therefore coming out at a rather inconvenient time. I loathe the Trump administration’s disregard for and delegitimization of scientific institutions, including expert federal agencies. Nevertheless, the methods that some expert agencies use to constrain the information flow to consumers are highly flawed.