The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine had been under pressure from Republican leaders, including President Trump.
The nation’s top scientific body has removed a chapter on climate science from a reference manual for judges after an outcry from critics on the right, including President Trump.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said Friday that it had “determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review, and the chapter will not appear on our website while that review is underway.”
The chapter appeared in the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which was produced in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center and was released last year. The 1,700-page manual covers many different topics and is intended to help judges understand science and technology that might come up in cases. Other subjects covered in the manual include eyewitness identification, toxicology and neuroscience.
Climate change is figuring into a growing number of legal cases, including lawsuits against oil companies over their role in global warming, as well as other cases involving government regulations, natural disasters, insurance claims, land use and the energy industry. The now-deleted chapter was the manual’s first foray into climate science.
The Federal Judicial Center, which is a government agency, removed the chapter from its website in February after criticism from Republican attorneys general and other officials. The National Academies, which operates as a private scientific advisory body under a congressional charter, declined to do so at the time.
In a separate development last month, the National Academies issued a report on a type of research known as attribution science, a growing field that examines whether specific extreme-weather events, such as a particular storm or flood, were intensified or made more likely by climate change. The report concluded that research of this type was getting more sophisticated and yielding better data.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
