This is a timely and substantive call, rooted in a specific April 2026 letter from three distinguished physicists—Richard Lindzen (MIT emeritus), William Happer (Princeton emeritus), and Steven Koonin (Stanford Hoover Institution)—to Chief Justice John Roberts. They urge him, as chair of the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), to direct the removal of the new “How Science Works” chapter (65 pages) from the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and reinstate the earlier, shorter, neutral version by David Goodstein (former Caltech vice provost).

The scientists argue that the replacement chapter shifts emphasis from the scientific method (testable predictions confronted with data, falsifiability, reproducible results) to “scientific consensus” and “community norms,” which they view as vulnerable to groupthink, funding pressures, and untestable claims—especially in fields like climate science where controlled experiments are limited. They tie this directly to the manual’s influence on thousands of judges handling over 1,000 climate-related cases and warn it risks undermining the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision, which ended Chevron deference and placed greater responsibility on judges to independently evaluate technical and scientific questions in statutory interpretation.

Judges are not scientists, and the Supreme Court has never claimed they should resolve scientific debates. Their role is procedural and evidentiary: to demand that proffered “science” in court meets basic standards of reliability before it influences outcomes in toxic torts, regulatory challenges, or mass litigation. Post-Loper Bright, this gatekeeping is even more critical because agencies no longer get automatic deference on ambiguous statutes involving technical matters.

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From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney, Jeff Reynolds

Calling Chief Justice John Roberts!

The latest edition of a scientific reference manual for judges across America is riddled with deficiencies that stem from potential conflicts of interest, politicized language, and assaults on the scientific method.

So says an April letter written to the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by a group of professional climate scientists asking Roberts to intervene in edits made to the latest edition of judicial guidance on science issues.

Restoration News obtained a copy of the letter, penned by scientists with expertise in physics and atmospheric studies, who express serious concerns about the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The authors claim it departs from what they view as a long-standing practice of neutrality.

The scientists are asking Roberts to direct the Federal Judicial Center to remove one of the manual’s chapters and replace it with earlier version “that remains a concise, accurate, and non-ideological explanation for scientific reasoning appropriate for judicial use.” Otherwise, the scientists warn, the judiciary could be contaminated with faulty evidence.

This is no small administrative manner. In the wake of the 2024 Loper Bright decision by the Supreme Court that reversed the longstanding “Chevron Deference” doctrine, justices now have the freedom to interpret ambiguous laws, instead of deferring that interpretation to bureaucrats. Rather than relying on a federal agency to write its own rules in the face of such statutory ambiguity, judges can now rule whether federal regulations make any sense given the controlling statute.

The new rewrite of guidance to judges appears to constitute a deliberate sabotage of the Loper Bright ruling, once again boxing in judges. In this instance, however, the limitations require judges to consider “scientific consensus” OVER science determined by the scientific method.

This could have direct effects on hundreds of pending and future lawsuits by radical leftists who want to sue Big Oil in the manner they utilized to destroy Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Indeed, this appears to be a naked attempt to rig the game in favor of the “#ExxonKnew” campaign that seeks to hold petroleum companies liable for man-made global warming.

These lawsuits are projected to cause trillions of dollars’ worth of damage, not just to Big Oil, but the entire economy—which, after all, runs principally on oil and natural gas.

What Is the Federal Judicial Center?

Most Americans likely have no idea this agency even exists.

The Federal Judicial Center is the primary research and education agency for the United States federal courts, established by Congress in 1967. Located in Washington, D.C., it improves judicial administration by educating federal judges and staff, researching court operations, and preserving judicial history, all while operating without policymaking or enforcement authority.

As a separate agency within the judicial branch, the Federal Judicial Center has the congressionally assigned role of providing accurate, objective information to federal judges. By statute, the chief justice serves as the center’s chair.

Since the chapter in question in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence adopts what the letter’s signatories describe as an “advocacy framework,” as opposed to scientific one, they argue, it should be disqualified as reference material. The timing is critical as the letter says there are more than 1,000 climate-related cases working their way through state and federal courts. The Reference Manual is provided to more than 6,000 state and federal judges across America, making it a highly influential document since most judges are not trained in science.

Standing out from the pack is the litigation over the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding” that declared CO2 a pollutant.

In February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his agency would reverse the Obama-era rule while saving American taxpayers more than $1.3 trillion in the process. The endangerment finding sits at the center of costly climate regulations that restrict consumer choice.

The problem began in 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases could qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In its 5–4 decision, the high court gave climate activists the greenlight they needed—via the EPA—to exert widespread control over the economy without congressional input.

Since the high court’s ideological complexion has changed since that time, litigation over Zeldin’s rule change could lead to a new ruling that overturns the 2007 decision. But that scenario will become less likely if federal judges do not have access to material that plays it straight with the science.

Even the Law Agrees: Consensus Is Not Science

In 1993, the Supreme Court established a precise definition of the scientific method in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. The letter to Roberts points out that the third edition of the Reference Manual, published in 1994, relies on this ruling, as well as the long-established acceptance of the scientific method as the “gold standard” for scientific evidence.

But the manual’s new chapter on science conflicts with the scientific method. The emphasis the chapter places on “scientific consensus” and “widespread acceptance” conflicts with the scientific method because consensus is a sociological phenomenon not rooted in science. They write:

Consensus is an inferior and inherently fragile substitute for the gold-standard of science: testable predictions confronted with data. It is invoked primarily in fields where controlled experiments are difficult or impossible and where predictions cannot be decisively tested. It is vulnerable to groupthink, funding lock-in, and the natural human reluctance to acknowledge error.

The revised chapter uses an absurd flowchart to justify the use of consensus, on page 97, that stacks logical fallacies on top of each other like cordwood:

Just as bad is how the revised chapter “mischaracterizes” science as a community-governed enterprise rather than a quest for objective truth. “Science is indeed a human activity,” the letter says,” but its authority derives from reproducible results, not from community norms or majority agreement.”

Scientists Grounded in the Scientific Method

Three scientists signed the letter: Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University; and Steven Koonin, the Edward Teller senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

They credit the Federal Judicial Center for removing a chapter titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science” in response to correspondence from 28 state attorneys general that documented conflicts of interest and unsupported claims.

But here’s why there’s still a problem: A chapter underpinning the removed chapter remains in place. It is this massive chapter—titled “How Science Works”—that Lindzen, Happer, and Koonin want replaced with an earlier neutral and apolitical version:

Although the climate chapter has been removed, the chapter that undergirded it—”How Science Works”—remains. This chapter, 65 pages long, replaces the much shorter and widely respected 18-page version written for earlier editions by David Goodstein, former Vice Provost of Caltech. The new chapter does not acknowledge the prior version, nor does it resemble it in substance or tone.

The lead author of the new chapter, Professor Michael Weisberg, is a philosopher who also serves as a climate diplomat and advisor to several national delegations at the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) negotiations. His public biography highlights his work developing strategies to secure climate-related financial transfers for small island states. These roles do not inherently disqualify him. But hey do create a clear appearance of conflict when writing a chapter intended to guide judges on what constitutes legitimate scientific evidence—particularly in litigation where trillions of dollars may be at stake.

The director of the Federal Judicial Center has deleted the climate science chapter from its version of the manual.

But confusingly, the National Academy of Sciences will not remove the chapter from its printed and online versions of the same manual. Instead, the organization has opted for “asterisked language” to indicate that the Federal Judicial Center has omitted the chapter from its own version of the manual.

The resulting confusion could create vulnerabilities for activist judges to exploit in favor of environmental activists—perhaps deliberately.

Chief Justice Roberts could implement an immediate fix: Simply revert to the original version of “How Science Works,” which relied solely on the scientific method.

That fix would alleviate all confusion and guide judges toward ruling according to actual science—not agenda-driven political activism disguised as “scientific consensus.”

This article originally appeared at Restoration News