known to be expert in the field. Communication within the scientific community is an adversary process in which those claiming an addition to knowledge always prepare themselves to deal with the public criticisms of competing experts who will not easily be persuaded of the validity of a new significant claim. The frankness rule applies however only to communications within the scientific community. The current practice when scientists speak to the public, essentially means that they only need worry about questions which will be addressed to them by non experts. Our public institutions can usually deal with conflicting claims of sophisticated scientists by examining their credentials. The bankruptcy of this practice is exhibited every time we see competing lists of Nobel Prize winners supporting opposing propositions. This practice is to be contrasted with procedures in the scientific community where (ideally at least) it is what a person says, not who says it, that is important. The examination of the validity of scientific factual statements for logical consistency or for correspondence with observations of nature avoids the bankruptcy of appeals to authority cited above, but it does require much more expertise and more time than the public and lay officials can devote to purely scientific matters. It is my position that when statements of scientific fact are needed for the rational making of public policy and are apparently disputed, it is the duty of the scientific community to provide some kind of due process for stating what is known, what the uncertainties are and what is currently unknown. The scientific community has its own form of due process for its internal communications, as was briefly described above. What is needed is to extend these internal procedures to provide scientific information to the public in a way that the scientific community and the public will find credible. To achieve this end I propose the following ethical principle to be enforced by the scientific community: Any scientist who addresses the public or lay officials on scientific facts bearing on public policy matters should stand ready to publicly answer the questions, not only from the public, but those from expert adversaries. The science court was proposed as an experimental first step in the implementation of this ethical principle. The procedures proposed have been described in many places, but since they have frequently been misunderstood, it might be worthwhile to briefly set them forward here again. Suppose that a public decision must be made between propositions A and B. (The function of the science court is not to make the decision or even to recommend a decision.) For this purpose we lean heavily on the groups a and b who are committed advocates of these propositions. We ask their representatives to approve the procedures, examine the scientific judges for prejudice, etc. We also expect them to prepare a list of factual assertions which they consider important for their side of the case, to accept or to challenge the factual statements made by their adversaries, and to publicly answer the questions of the most informed experts their adversaries can find. After this public procedure the judges write their opinions on any factual matters which still remain controversial. The publication of the agreed factual statements and the judges' opinions complete the procedure. COMMUNICATION IN THE PRESENCE OF CONTROVERSY It is remarkable that in recent decades characterized by strident rhetoric in conflicts involving apparent disagreements over scientific facts, no powerful constituency for the development of improved process has yet appeared. We have seen a
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