Hacker News Reader

Comment by dzdt | Hacker News Reader

Trial by jury is so badly equipped to answer complicated questions like does Roundup/glyphosate cause cancer, and did it specifically cause this cancer.

Juries are equipped to answer whether a person not so different from the jurors is guilty of a crime not so far removed from the jurors' experience. They are not equipped to resolve factual questions about things like this (or patent cases -- another crazy one we see on HN).

Jury == random number generator. Maybe they get it right, but only by chance.

View on HN

The jury is not answering that question. The jury is just there to evaluate the credibility of the competing experts who have offered opinions on that question. If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institutions. Luckily, lay people are qualified to make those judgments. Whenever I have seen an actual jury at work, I have consistently been impressed by the degree to which folks can absorb the information presented at trial. They are far from "random number generators": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628507/

> If this claim is valid, an ideal study would be to compare the judgments of medical doctors to the verdicts rendered by juries. A study by Taragin et al. [31] did just that. The study utilized data from the closed claim files of a medical liability insurer. The insurers had medical doctors closely examine the medical records in cases involving claims of medical negligence to determine if medical negligence had occurred. Tarragin et al. [31] compared these judgments with verdicts rendered by juries if the case went to trial. The jury verdicts tended to be consistent with the medical judgments. Moreover, the study found that verdicts were not related to the severity of the injury suffered by the plaintiff, an indication that juries were not basing their judgment out of mere sympathy for a seriously injured patient. Farber and White [13] also compared jury verdicts to hospital records bearing on negligence. Those authors found that the jury verdicts favored the hospital in all cases that the hospital had rated as not-negligent.

The billion-dollar punitive damages verdict, moreover, is not crazy considering that the point of punitive damages is to deter similar conduct in the future. If you look at what folks here on HN--presumably quite knowledgeable about the subject matter--were saying about how much Facebook should be fined to deter conduct like that which led to the Cambridge Analytica issues, the numbers were likewise in the billions of dollars.

>The jury is just there to evaluate the credibility of the competing experts who have offered opinions on that question.

It's not clear that they're competent to do this, either.

>If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institutions.

Not necessarily. It just calls into question whether the system works well in this class of cases.

>Whenever I have seen an actual jury at work, I have consistently been impressed by the degree to which folks can absorb the information presented at trial.

Have you seen something even remotely comparable to the case being discussed here?

>Have you seen something even remotely comparable to the case being discussed here?

The tobacco cases come to mind.

I was part of one growing up, the jurors definitely were not just judging based on emotions or lack of facts. They end up voting on a series of yes/no questions that ultimately narrow down the decision. End of the day the judge is still in charge and if he doesn't like the result it will get tossed. We went through the process twice - winning both times no less.

Are you suggesting that the juries in those cases were competent to understand and evaluate the science of cancer?

Just because they happened to make the right choice doesn't make them competent. A broken clock is right twice a day.

>Just because they happened to make the right choice doesn't make them competent.

So let me get this right...you don’t think a jury can comprehend and understand the facts being presented to them through experts, yet without hearing any facts or experts you can confirm these juries “made the right choice”?

As I said before there will be educated people in this thread who down play a juries ability to make a accurate finding of fact and yet be all to happy to make their own findings without any knowledge of the facts of a given case or expert testimony, just as you did.

>So let me get this right...you don’t think a jury can comprehend and understand the facts being presented to them through experts, yet without hearing any facts or experts you can confirm these juries “made the right choice”?

Yes. It's possible to make a good decision through a flawed process.

So, what exactly are you arguing for - an autocratic class of rulers who make decisions for the general public about their own health?

I'm arguing that even though the system works well in many (most?) cases, there are common corner cases in which it does not.

I don't know where you're getting the idea that I endorse autocratic rulers, but it's absurd and borderline inflammatory.

> It's not clear that they're competent to do this, either.

What's the alternative, though?

The only counter suggestion I've ever seen are expert panels that remove decisions from The People and move it up the ladder of control and power, where the elites and bureaucrats can ideally be more easily paid off by companies like Bayer to rule in their favor. The elites love choke points that amplify their control over society, always under the guise that they know best (inevitably resulting in vast, systemic corruption that is nearly impossible to stop).

Panels and government oversight boards are just another easy target for lobbying (in all of its various flavors). As though the US system doesn't have enough of those corruption points in place now. There are an enormous number of jury cases in the US every year however, and bribery is rare.

If you replace traditional juries with expert panels, it's guaranteed that the system will be designed - by those that benefit from all other forms of lobbying - to have holes in it that allow forms of legal lobbying and influence, whether direct or indirect.

I'll take juries of The People in all regards, and without exception, over the extraordinarily dangerous, anti-democratic risks involved in shifting the system toward elitist expert panels. We already have enough of that shit dominating our country as it is. I choose the less perfect system - if that's indeed the choice - that retains power in the people broadly, keeping a critically important piece of the justice system mass-involved - something we're all part of.

Not sure why you are downvoted.

I disagree with the outcome of this case and leaving scientific decisions in the hands of people who may not have the cogitative skills to make the best assessments is an issue and would like see a solution. That being said, the moral hazards you point out do appear to be a much larger potential issue and I agree the risks of "expert panels" probably aren't worth it. We need some sort of redress to non biased citizens.

Perhaps civil trials with monetary rewards are a different matter than criminal trials though, not sure. Anyway, your point is good.

Not necessarily disagreeing with your points but who exactly are “the elites”? Elite thinkers? Elite earners? Elite influencers? Elite who, and elite by what criteria?

I read it as elite politicians. People especially apt at getting what they want.

The billionaire class and the multinational conglomerates under their control.

I'm not sure there is one, but the fact that something is the least bad option available doesn't make it not bad.

I think we would need to develop a system that restricts the potential jurors to those who are qualified without restricting it so much that they are drawn from a small set of gatekeepers who can easily be corrupted.

Perhaps both lawyers could be allowed to negotiate requirements for the jurors (e.g. they must have a technical background, at least half must have college degrees, etc.). Or perhaps each lawyer negotiates requirements for some of the jurors with the judge.

Another approach would be to make changes to the legal system. For example:

Make it illegal for a lawyer to present evidence that they know to be scientifically or technologically unsound or to present a witness that they know to be unqualified.

Make it perjury for an expert witness to knowingly present scientifically unsound statements or to comment on something that they are unqualified for.

Make unsound science valid grounds for overturning or appealing a case.

Require statements to be backed by data that meets statistical requirements.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure these wouldn't be a perfect solution, but perhaps they would help.

District courts already exercise extensive control over what and how scientific evidence gets presented to a jury. Before trial, experts submit reports detailing their opinion (these can be hundreds of pages with supporting appendices). There is then a period of expert discovery, where the experts are deposed for a day or more each and grilled by the other side’s lawyer. Then there are “Daubert motions,” where each side asks the judge to exclude parts of the other expert’s testimony. Excluding testimony based on unsound and unreliable methods is the key focus of the Daubert motions. This is a process that takes months, and involves hundreds of pages of additional briefing, plus usually oral argument to the judge. And those decisions are then reviewable on appeal. Appellate courts routinely throw out jury verdicts because expert testimony was based on unreliable methods. By the time the case gets to the jury, the expert evidence has been vetted and the jury is presented with a very controlled picture of each side’s argument.

The issue is, experts genuinely don’t agree on much of anything. Is salt bad for your blood pressure? Many medical doctors would say yes, many would say no. There is almost no subject where you can’t find highly qualified experts that have conflicting opinions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system

Some such systems, such as the one in Germany, don't have "jury of your peers," but a panel of professional jurists who act as both judge and jury.

Is that actually better, though? On the surface, it sounds like a recipe for corruption.

If I had to choose between the systems, I would choose the non-adversarial approach. There's a famous paper, "Land without Plea Bargaining: How the Germans Do It", https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti..., where I first learned of the German system. That paper was written in 1979, and since then, Germany does have plea bargains (https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-upholds-plea-bargains/a-1...). But in the US, plea bargaining essentially is our criminal justice system.

I'm curious why you think it allows for more corruption than the US system. Something I find compelling about the German system is that the primary point is not to decide guilt or innocence of the accused, but to determine the truth. (See https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol34/iss2/5/).

> But in the US, plea bargaining essentially is our criminal justice system.

Plea bargaining in the US is, in my opinion, a corrupt practice.

> I'm curious why you think it allows for more corruption than the US system.

I didn't make that claim in the big picture, I was talking specifically about the the role of jurors in terms of evaluating the credibility of expert testimony.

My concern with the idea of "professional jurors" is that they represent an easy target for corruption in the form of coercion, bribery, etc. How can you ensure that a professional juror is actually impartial and fair? If jurors are always coming from the same pool of people, won't they develop relationships with prosecutors and the like that may influence their impartiality?

That is interesting, but the study you cite concerns medical malpractice lawsuits. Determining that a doctor was negligent in such lawsuits no doubt involves difficult issues, but issues perhaps far less complex than those at play in the Roundup lawsuits, where, as the parent comment said, the jury must decide "does glyphosate cause cancer, and did it specifically cause this cancer."

> the Roundup lawsuits, where, as the parent comment said, the jury must decide "does glyphosate cause cancer, and did it specifically cause this cancer."

The system isn't set up to answer or ask the question "did it specifically cause this cancer", because that question is known to be unanswerable.

> The system isn't set up to answer or ask the question "did it specifically cause this cancer", because that question is known to be unanswerable.

I'm curious how you draw this conclusion. While many substances may not, with 100% reproduction rates, cause a particular response there can be a majority that happens when excessive or improper exposure happens. If you're saying the question is unanswerable because it's not 100% guaranteed you'll get cancer, but say 67% chance then that's proof it did cause cancer in the subset. In this case it appears there has been suppressed study data which points directly to the outcome which brings into question, for the jury, the morality of the organization selling the product which are likely influencing reference points for a jury.

Isn't it the case that the standard of proof here is 'via a preponderance of the evidence' (it is more likely than not) rather than the criminal trial 'beyond a reasonable doubt'?

That seems decidable.

You have situations like the following:

- The age-adjusted baseline rate of a particular type of cancer is, say, 1%.

- An age-adjusted 2.5% of people in an afflicted community have been diagnosed with this type of cancer. This is a huge increase above baseline.

- By implication, of people in the community with a diagnosis of this type of cancer, 40% of them would have cancer anyway for reasons unrelated to whatever is being sued over, and 60% of them got it "because" of whatever the problem is.

It isn't possible to make any distinction between those groups at the level of an individual case. There's no difference in the cancer.

McGhee v National Coal Board is probably the most instructive case on the matter. It brought a 'material increase in risk' test to apply to the causation step of analysis. The case has been widely cited and has had international impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGhee_v_National_Coal_Board

Your jurisdiction might deal with things differently, but this case has had international adoption, as the framework deals with scientific uncertainty fairly elegantly.

> The billion-dollar punitive damages verdict, moreover, is not crazy considering that the point of punitive damages is to deter similar conduct in the future. [..] here on HN [..] were saying about how much Facebook should be fined [..] were likewise in the billions of dollars.

Billions of dollars, yes. In cases of government vs company. Or a class action. But I don't think HN or anyone reasonable was ever in favor of billion dollar judgments in matters that ten thousands of also effected claimants trying to get the same.

Is there any requirement for people to be given equal punitive damages? For compensation damages it makes sense that similar cases get similar amounts, but for punitive it might well be that the first one gets it all, and then the court can consider punishment delivered for the underlying offense.

>> If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institutions.

That it does, but that doesn't in turn mean that lay people are equipped to evaluate such credibility. I can't help but browse social media, watch the news, or interact with people in my town without questioning the general ability to evaluate credibility.

The problem case is where the experts also can't answer the question the court is concerned about.

Did a certain specific person get cancer due to exposure to a chemical? Typically you can only assert that their risk of cancer increased, which makes the answer essentially unknowable.

Which is not to say that they shouldn't be held liable for this sort of thing, but a bunch of jury trials for individual cases probably isn't a great way to do it.

If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institution

Gee. Who would have thought that giving an equal voice to people on both sides of the bell curve would lead to any other outcome than what we're seeing?

(Answer: a lot of smart people thought that. Were they right?)

> Luckily, lay people are qualified to make those judgments. Whenever I have seen an actual jury at work, I have consistently been impressed by the degree to which folks can absorb the information presented at trial.

Having been through a jury trial for patent infringement, I saw nothing of the sort. My company was defending, and the plaintiffs dismissed every juror who had anything more than a high school degree. They were incapable of understanding any nuance in the engineering or math, and so they sided for the home team (the plaintiffs managed to get jurisdiction in their home town).

If you like, call it sour grapes because my company was on the losing side, but I think the majority of jurors are completely unequipped to understand basic science, mathematics, engineering, software, medicine, or technology.

>My company was defending, and the plaintiffs dismissed every juror who had anything more than a high school degree.

Your problem appears to be that you had a biased jury rather than a comment for trials by jury in general

The jury is always biased by design. It’s never a goal to make the jury objective and/or competent, ever.

I thought both sides get to pick who is on the Jury?

I'm not sure how much the rules vary, but in our case there were 18 candidate jurors and both sides were allowed to dismiss 3 without cause or justification. Additionally, if either side could argue there was a cause, additional jurors could be dismissed (requiring new jurors to be summoned), but that didn't happen. The plaintiffs removed the 3 with any college at all.

Is the problem not that only 3 out of 18 had college-level education? That seems like a very low number.

That could be a representative sample of the area the trial was held in. Trial by jury of your peers means that some juries will be composed of mostly and sometimes even all "peers" with less formal education that most would think appropriate for the subject matter being discussed.

Right and both sides try to make the jury as biased as possible. trying to select for objectiveness is harmful.

Harmful to the side doing the picking or harmful to the justice process in general?

i would argue, both

His point is that the bias is systemic.

In the specific context of evaluating whether or not juries do a good job of making decisions in medical-malpractices cases (which is different from this article about glyphosate I think??), I'm confused about your interpretation of these two findings:

> The insurers had medical doctors closely examine the medical records in cases involving claims of medical negligence to determine if medical negligence had occurred. Tarragin et al. [31] compared these judgments with verdicts rendered by juries if the case went to trial. The jury verdicts tended to be consistent with the medical judgments.

> Those authors found that the jury verdicts favored the hospital in all cases that the hospital had rated as not-negligent.

Would those articles' findings also be consistent with the following hypotheses?

(1) Physicians tend to give their colleagues the benefit of the doubt, applying empathy and excusing neglect in borderline cases of negligence.

(2) Hospitals tend to issue findings of negligence which protect their employees, preferring to retain staff with otherwise positive job performance in borderline cases of negligence.

(3) Juries tend to trust the opinions of hospitals and doctors who say that other doctors were not negligent, more than they tend to trust experts who say the opposite.

> If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institutions.

Yes and yes.

>The billion-dollar punitive damages verdict, moreover, is not crazy considering that the point of punitive damages is to deter similar conduct in the future

I think most would be ok with this reasoning behind punitive damages, as long as lawyers representing victims cannot collect more than, say 1.2 mln $USD (or some large multiple of a minimal wage).

Otherwise, the obscene punitive damages are transferred as insurance cost, baked into pharma costs, and covered exclusively by US consumers.

> The jury is just there to evaluate the credibility of the competing experts who have offered opinions on that question. If lay people are not equipped to evaluate such credibility, that calls into question the very underpinnings of our policy-making institutions.

Isn’t that the point being made?

Frankly I don’t see how juries can possibly be expected to weigh two expert opinions espousing statistical whatever’s. I can force a statistical argument either way, and if you don’t have both a background in the area and time to dig through assumptions you’re gonna have a hard time knowing if I’m right.

Punitive damages to deter similar conduct have less effect when the company has just been sold to Bayer. Bayer is not a saint, but it seems it will have to pay for all the evil of mosanto.

>Jury == random number generator. Maybe they get it right, but only by chance.

They may be laymen on the subject, but they heard the evidence and expert testimony...that makes them more knowledgeable about the facts than anyone in this thread, and yet you’ll see many educated people here with opinions without any facts (beyond newspaper articles).

And while they may be better equipped to make a finding of fact of a criminal case (did person x do y), but often it’s still just a chance they get it right, plus those criminal cases have a much higher standard than a civil case.

So it’s important to keep in mind what is being asked of the jury here. They aren’t asking if roundup cause cancer, not even asking did roundup cause cancer beyond a reasonable doubt, but simply based on the expert testimony and facts presented is it more likely than not (>50% chance) Roundup caused cancer.

Expert testimony just mean two opposing claims paid for by the respective sides. The jury is in no position to determine which claim is more correct.

Actually that is the exact position the jury is in, and they do it everyday.

Do you have any evidence or studies to suggest juries can’t determine credibility of expert testimony?

It's almost impossible to determine credibility in a field that you know nothing about. Any sufficiently complicated question can be argued using facts on both sides, and a non-expert will have no idea how much weight each fact should have. For example anyone in software could argue why using the cloud for anything is a horrible idea. And remember that jurors are not allowed to do research at home, and expert witnesses cannot directly debate the topics.

> a non-expert will have no idea how much weight each fact should have

In theory, that is the purpose of the lawyer(s) -- to try to ground the technical expertise in a way that the jury (and often the judge!) can understand and assign value/import/trustworthiness/credibility to the testimony and exhibits they are given.

in theory.

Experts testifying under oath present facts. The jury doesn't determine which experts are correct, they use the facts to evaluate the opposing claims.

Expert witnesses are there to present opinions. Fact witnesses are there to present facts.

> The jury is in no position to determine which claim is more correct.

Society determines what is correct or wrong. A jury is a random selection of society. Anyone who wants provide a good to a society must follow principles set by the society.

And maybe Society gets things wrong right? We dont torture people to get confessions anymore (in most western countries at least) so surely our standards evolve over time. We are not at the Apex of everything yet.

Yes society sometimes gets things 'wrong' in retrospective

Not 'wrong', just wrong. There is such a thing as an objective truth (for a given question), and you can be relatively closer to or farther from it than the next guy (or next 8 billion guys).

No - the facts don't change just because a large enough number of people disagree.

Facts in a society are what that society deems or 'proven to be as truth'. Most facts are indeed a fact because a large amount of people (in the respective field) agree that it is a 'fact' ('irrefutable truth' as seen by that society or group).

Juries combine those expert testimonies with documents from discovery to try to piece together the real story. In this case they were likely trying to determine if the company new it was dangerous, if they knew it caused cancer, if they tried to cover it up, etc.

Why would anyone else be more equipped?

I think this is one reason we have juries. They represent popular justice.

Justice is supposed to serve the people, it is not a rule-based programming language, there is a human element behind it. That's why we have magistrates, who make sure the rules are properly applied, and juries, who make sure the decision matches what the people want.

So in this case, magistrates decided that what Bayer did was punishable and the people, represented by the jury, decided that Bayer are assholes and definitely deserve it. I don't agree but it is, I think, an important component of a democratic justice system.

Of course, Bayer will appeal. So maybe this time, science will prevail. I hope so.

> Of course, Bayer will appeal. So maybe this time, science will prevail. I hope so.

i.e. you're saying that according to science Roundup does not cause cancer?

I guess they’re saying that there’s, on balance, no good evidence to suggest that (especially proper use of) Roundup causes cancer. Because that’s the prevailing expert opinion, backed up by decades of studies.

The scientific opinion is that is insufficient evidence to either exclude or include it as a cancer cause but most studies show some increase. This is the main reason for only extending the permit in the EU for 5 years instead of indefinitely.

It is also grade 2A by the WHO, which basically means it may cause cancer in humans.

> The scientific opinion is that is insufficient evidence to either exclude or include it as a cancer cause but most studies show some increase.

No, this is patently false. Out of all expert consortia, only IARC (= WHO) has reached this conclusion, and it was universally criticised for both the way they report risks (which is highly misleading), and the fact that their publication in turn suppressed contradictory results. All other relevant expert consortia state that the evidence does not support the conclusion of glyphosate and/or Roundup being carcinogenic when used correctly, despite the existence of decades worth of data which should show carcinogenicity, if it had an appreciable effect. “Most studies”, especially high-quality ones, show absolutely no effect.

Is there evidence that it is carcinogenic when used incorrectly?

If there were, I could see a scenario where incorrect usage was so likely or unavoidable that it becomes negligence on Bayer's part.

I don't know if that's the case here; however.

No direct evidence as far as I know (definitely none for glyphosate, possibly for Roundup) but that’s why Monsanto/Bayer publishes precise usage instructions, and such risk would be based on dosage and wearing of appropriate PPE (= e.g. gloves). In other words: Any risk would be hardly unavoidable.

If you drank it I imagine all bets are off but I can't imagine there are many of those studies nor is it relevant to the case.

The question here is whether Bayer /Monsanto knowingly used a carcinogen that nearly every health org says is not a carcinogen.

Can't speak to every ingredient in roundup, but basically every US and European health or AG agency say glyphosate does not cause cancer. One of the UN agencies agrees.

Could an additive cause cancer? Maybe, but it's pretty hard to argue that Bayer intentionally used an easily replacible carcinogenic surfectants to be evil.

That's what I expect a person who has never been on a jury would say.

Once upon a time, I sat on a jury. A man whose job was to clean the interior storage holds of massive ships was driving a work vehicle and hit by a truck full of joyriding kids on a highway surrounded by cane fields. The kids didn't see him, he didn't see them.

He filed a claim with his employer's insurance agency. His employer sided with the insurance agency and tried to offer him a pittance for pain, suffering, medical costs, and rehabilitation. The man had a high school education and worked hard for his employer for 3 decades, doing backbreaking work. To do this work, you had to put on a hazmat suit and climb up and down 100+ feet of ladder, lugging your cleaning equipment and cleaning lines with you, then stand around with your hands above your head spraying chemicals for hours to clean one of these vessels.

The injuries he suffered were debilitating. The insurance company set some private investigators out, looking for evidence that he was lying about his impairment. The best they could come up with was that he washed his car. They tried to make it seem like he was faking, but the timestamp evidence showed that it took the man over 2 hours to wash his car and that he had to take multiple breaks because of his pain. Their expert witness testified that he could have done the work of spraying the vessel. What he couldn't have done is make the climb. They had to fuse his vertebrae and put pins in his hip and knee.

His employer testified that they would have promoted him to foreman, but cross examination showed that a foreman was expected to examine the vessel, which was impossible for him because he couldn't safely make the climb, pain or not, and even if he could, he wouldn't have been able to safely board the ship.

He was making good money for someone without an education, $60K or so a year. At 50, he had expected to work for another 15 years. The insurance company decided that his pain, suffering, loss of wages, loss of benefits, and loss of employment was worth $180k. His insurance policy called for full compensation for lost wages.

We ruled in his favor for $1.3M, to be shared by the employer for being lying sacks of crap after 30 years of service, and his insurance company for not honoring their contract. THAT was equitable. Pain, suffering, lost wages, the bullshit he was put through during the legal process, and loss of ability to enjoy physical activity in the future. They all matter.

Tell me again how we were badly equipped to answer complicated questions.

You were well equipped to answer that particular question.

Do you think the answer would be as straightforward if you substituted your jury on this case?

A bunch of intelligent adults with access to data, the facts, and a lot of free time?

Yes.

Jury selection doesn't filter for intelligence, so your description doesn't seem applicable.

I think you would be surprised.

Jury selection filters for people who vote, have long-term residence in a single location, have jobs that at least modestly allow jury service, and who actually show up to jury duty.

To make a sweeping generalization, those things all correlate with intelligence.

Anecdotally, the people I've met at jury selection in downtown Oakland, CA are not a representative sample of who you see outside the building.

And therefore have an investment in ruling correctly. I think you are correct and the appeal to expert opinion is not convincing.

As a non-American, the jury system feels alien. Advantages and disadvantages, I guess.

Except it clearly didn’t work in this case since the jury reached a conclusion that is fundamentally at odds with the conclusion reached by experts worldwide.

I’m baffled by how this is discussed on here as “well, maybe the jury was right”. We know that the jury wasn’t right.

Or maybe the experts are wrong?

Yes, of course maybe all the experts are wrong, and the jury of lay people was right. But even if this unlikely case occurred here, do you really want to build legal cases and policy on such a fluke?

What are the chances that 12 randomly selected members of the public are better at understanding biological mechanisms, judging statistical models and weighing evidence than people who have been studying these things for decades?

One group has an interest in making a living by working for multi-billion dollar corporations.

The other group is just the general public, who won't make a single penny from dedicating their lives to understanding the facts as they are presented.

The vast majority of experts in this field are not affiliated with Monsanto and don’t make a dime from it. They are the “general public”, except well informed, and have studied years to understand the relevant (complex) background to make an informed assessment. Non-experts may be dedicated but they simply don’t match years or even decades of rigorous studying on the subject.

This “all experts are in the pockets of big X corporation” is inaccurate and insulting. It’s just getting really tiring.

> conclusion reached by experts worldwide.

A relevant group of the experts don't agree with the conclusion, namely those working for the IARC/WHO.

… and the IARC monograph on Roundup, in turn, has been dismissed universally by experts as both flawed and misleading. Amongst other things, they arbitrarily excluded high-quality studies that showed no evidence of carcinogenicity, and included at least one study claiming to show an effect but in reality failed to do so (it didn’t show dose dependence, which means the result is not statistically robust but rather a random fluke). The scientific consensus is completely on Monsanto’s side in this debate. Pretending otherwise is simply dishonest, there’s no other word for it.

If that is the case then it shouldn't be a problem to ask IARC to make a new monograph. That this doesn't happen tells me that the case isn't as simple here as you say.

You haven't given any evidence to back up your claim. What in particular makes you believe the jury in this case wasn't equipped to answer the questions asked of them?

No doubt it's complicated, but to play devil's advocate, if a company can't demonstrate to a lay person that a chemical isn't dangerous and how to use it safely, then perhaps they shouldn't sell the chemical to the general public, and maybe should even be punished for doing so.

You have the burden of proof reversed.

That response doesn't make any sense.

I didn't agree or disagree with, I simply asked the OP to explain their reasoning.

And I also disagree that the burden of proof would be on the "other side". The status quo is trial by jury. That will never change if nobody wants to explain why they think it's bad or what would work better.

I believe the burden of proof response was in relation to the statement, "if a company can't demonstrate to a lay person that a chemical isn't dangerous".

That would be asking them to "prove a negative" (really, it's proving a universal claim, not a negative claim, but 'negative' is the popular tagline). This cannot ever be done. All you can do is show that there is no credible evidence that it is dangerous. At the point, the burden of proof lies with the the claim that it is, in fact, dangerous.

>given any evidence to back up your claim. What in particular makes you believe the jury in this case wasn't equipped to answer the questions asked of them?

Given the staggering consensus on glyphosates safety-- the outcome of the case would make me say that.

Glyphosates are known to be unsafe so it seems like the jury got it right...

Known by whom? The majority of government agencies and international NGOs disagree with you.

> Trial by jury is so badly equipped to answer complicated questions like does Roundup/glyphosate cause cancer, and did it specifically cause this cancer.

If a company is willing to engage in an extended cover-up, the jury can, rightfully, draw the conclusion that the company actually believes there is a problem even if their paid "experts" claim otherwise.

This is civil court, not criminal. The standards are different.

The entire concept of trying to determine fault in specific cancer cases is bogus. Carcinogens change the odds, but you can never definitively point to one as being at fault for a particular cancer.

Civil Juries are asked to make a probabilistic decision, not a definitive decision. The filter end up being whether it is "more likely than not, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty" a cause of the harm.

A random number generator is still better than an arbitrator, who more often than not sides with whomever has the most money.

That's true. Its unfortunate that our regulatory agencies have been so utterly captured by industry that they are essentially worthless when it comes to oversight. Worse yet, the existence of these agencies gives many a false sense of confidence that there is some governmental body out there insuring that we aren't being poisoned by corporations and that our environment isn't being saturated by chemicals, but unfortunately that isn't so.

The jury is meant to be a random selection of members of society, but what alternative do you propose then; a jury of 'experts' in the field? that would seem flawed

Juding the crediibility of each side does not mean you are anywhere closer to the truth. How about commissioning independent studies to answer the question?

You are aware that Monsanto internal emails where made public that showed them colluding with various "independent" agencies? They shot themselves in the foot trying to make the issue go away instead of letting follow up studies clear Roundup of any cancer issues.

Then such studies were not independent per definition if Monsanto had any kind of access to them or who conducted them. If need be, mandate the government to monitor said studies and sue any form of intervention. There are many ways to make it more difficult for companies to put pressure: secrecy, duplication, decentralization, etc...

> mandate the government to monitor said studies

The studies in those emails where kicked of by government agencies in response to the cancer claims. So that is exactly the scenario Monsanto already has interfered with and is prepared to interfere with again.

> and sue any form of intervention.

So we double down on lawsuits instead of just using one and util those new lawsuits are decided the old one spends decades in limbo? Right now the getting caught trying to manipulate studies was part of the original lawsuit and Monsanto/Bayer certainly did not enjoy the results.

> secrecy, duplication, decentralization

That seems to contradict the whole do "two" studies directly in response of the lawsuit. They are not secret, just two means you can manipulate one without any way to decide the correct study and having the same government agencies from the emails set them up just the kind of centralisation any company with regulators in their poket would love.

Who is a 'lay person'? Since few here are scientists who have done studies on pesticides and roundup everyone on this board is a lay person and thus hardly in a position to make any informed comment on rule of law or this case. Your whole 'lay person' argument discredits all lay people including yourself, given 'experts' have designed the system and it is working as designed, so what is the value of a lay software persons opinion on matters of law and pesticides?

This is throwing a tantrum against rule of law. It shocking many here have no respect for citizens and by extension democracy, have appropriated for themselves a monopoly of wisdom and think science is something only scientists understand. Well that rules out the software engineers as they are not scientists or experts and they should limit comment to software issues or this is clear evidence of the dunning kruger effect in the software ecosystem.

There are serious disagreements among scientists so there is no 'scientific consensus' on a large number of issues. For normal people here when top voted comments show open disdain for citizens and democracy and cannot have empathy for citizens being potentially poisoned and side with billion dollar pharmaceutical companies you are in serious trouble.

> and did it specifically cause this cancer.

If I sit you down for 30 minutes on a drum of dangerous nuclear waste, and within a year, you develop prostate cancer, how would you ever be able to definitively prove that I caused that cancer?

It could have, after all, been a random mutation in your body - caused by a stray cosmic ray.

Cancer is a probabilistic outcome. It is impossible to prove that any one particular thing caused any one particular cancer.

Does that mean that I should not be liable?

To clarify, you are hinting that there is a strong case to me be made for holding you liable, correct? I had a hard time determining what your takeaway was.

I would agree with that, as society should work to prevent actions that significantly increase the probability of severe harm, even if complete and definitive proof of harm cannot be had in each individual case.

I would be surprised if case law doesn't support that general idea. I'm sure the courts have had to deal with probabilistic situations before.

For an individual no, but with enough data points, which probably exist since roundup exists long enough, you could make a reliable prediction where it came from.

But if there are enough data points and they show roundup doesn't cause cancer above the population baseline, if someone who used roundup gets cancer we should in turn conclude roundup wasn't the cause.

The other thing to consider is there are a reported ~2,200 billionaires in the world (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/07/forbes-there-are-a-record-22...)

In the process of creating damages that dissuade companies from damaging behavior, we're also creating people with immense power (if they ever collect).

I could see a $2B amount making sense if the couple controlled a multi million dollar company that failed because they fell ill from cancer.

But otherwise, wouldn't it make sense to pay the victims some multiple of their average annual income for life plus health care costs and send the rest to a charity or hospital?

That would still generate a $2B verdict as a deterrent, but would also limit people from obtaining massive wealth without creating value.

The point of the fine is to subtract it from Monsanto. Who gets it is secondary.

Yeah, but if the primary objective is working, it might be worth optimizing the secondary objective as well.

You don't think giving someone a terminal illness is worth appropriate compensation?

What you described as compensation I would describe as adding insult to injury.

Unfortunately, equating a human life to dollars is always insulting. To that individual, their life could be worth an infinite amount and more than all the money in the world.

So, it's always a messy business trying to compensate someone for their health.

> Unfortunately, equating a human life to dollars is always insulting. To that individual, their life could be worth an infinite amount and more than all the money in the world.

True, but that's irrelevant. My life is worth more to me than any comapny could pay, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't expect recompense if the company poisoned me to death. I would want to enjoy my final days in as little suffering as possible and leave something behind for whoever I might care about.

The fact is, that by making them ill you have effectively ended their life. It's manslaughter, perhaps even murder, and you have prevented them from working to support their family.

If you're going to live the remainder of your life in suffering I would bloody well hope the parties responsible start emptying their pockets for you and your family.

I can't believe I'm actually having to defend the concept of compensation from a company that poisoned someone to death. I know HN has a serious case of corporate sycophancy but this is on another level.

Sorry for any confusion, but there absolutely should be serious compensation to the victims. The question is only how much. Some might consider $1B an insult to the value of a human life.

Since it's impossible to compensate someone fairly when looking at it from the value of a human life, I'm wondering if there isn't another way to calculate these settlements where the end goal is still the same: 1) provide a generous payment to the victims and 2) create a financial deterrent string enough for the offending company to stop and repair their actions and prevent any other companies from thinking of doing the same thing.

For #1, $10M, $100M, $1B, $10B, $100B, etc. are never enough for anyone that enjoys their life and their health. I just think it's worth considering how quickly we could create 2,000 lawsuit billionaires if the formula is $1B per terminal illness. Maybe that's a good thing for the 1% to be comprised of the descendants of victims who might spend their money in a conscious way, but I think $1B is such a rare, difficult thing to achieve and creates tremendous power that it's worth thinking about. Because why not give them $5B or $100B or make them the richest individuals on the planet? It still wouldn't be a fair deal for getting cancer.

For #2, I'm simply suggesting that we should consider paying some portion of the penalty to a hospital, charity, competitor, etc.

If you'd rather the $2B goes to the victim and another $2B goes to cancer research, ok. Or $2B to the victims and $2B to a competitor that could have sold more product had they not been undercut by cheap, cancer-causing products, that's fine too.

I just think society as a whole would benefit if we put some of the money into repairing the situation rather than only compensating the victim.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com