Assisting judges in screening medical practice guidelines for health care litigation

In a far-reaching decision about scientific evidence in federal cases handed down at the very end of the 1992-1993 term, the U.S. Supreme Court implicated medical practice guidelines in indirect, profound, yet highly uncertain ways. In Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc the Court ruled that judges must actively screen novel scientific evidence to assure both its relevance and its reliability.