assessments of conformity to Poppers basic rule of scientific method hinge on scientists interpretation of the term falsification; and the meaning of falsification depends entirely on researchers technical and scientific judgments. In situations of scientific uncertainty these judgments, and hence the meaning of Popperian rules, will be variable. Consequently, when there is uncertainty, the Popperian rules cannot provide a straightforward guide for scientists actions or decisions. There is a gap between [the] rule and particular action which can only be bridged by the very scientific choice which the rule is intended to constrain.
Id. In another formulation, they state that:
[t]he generality of the Popperian rules [like the falsification criterion], their lack of interpretive particularization and their independence of institutionalized social relationships, allow individual scientists considerable freedom to conceive of their own actions as Popperian in character and to attribute their intellectual success to the effectiveness of the Popperian approach.
Id. at 407. As to the uses and misuses of Poppers falsifiability criterion in law, see generally Gary Edmond & David Mercer, Conjectures and Exhumations: Citations of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science in US Federal Courts, 14 Law & Literature 309 (2002). Edmond and Mercer emphasize the degree of confidence invested by the [Daubert] majority in their Popperian inspired model of the scientific method [namely, the falsification criterion] and the absence, not only of conflicting and critical readings of Popper but of other philosophers and sociologists of science. Id. at 313.
In addition to some uncertainty as to the facts in the evolution of pragmatism [the familiar origin story is that Charles Peirce, William James, and others founded the Metaphysical Club in the 1870s at Cambridge], there are . . . several problems of interpretation. Peirce and James often gave very different accounts of what they understood by pragmatism.. . . .
[P]ragmatism, by virtue of being an evolving philosophical movement, is to be viewed as a group of associated theoretical ideas and attitudes developed over a period of time and exhibiting . . . rather significant shifts in direction and in formulation. . . .
Schiller, in an almost intoxicating pluralistic spirit, commented that there were as many pragmatisms as there were pragmatists . . . .
Id.
although states vary widely in how they treat certain types of scientific evidence, this variation does not correlate with the adherence to Frye or Daubert admissibility standards. The inherent . . . breadth of the inquiries compatible with either standard permits widely variable opinions concerning admissibility of a single scientific methodology.
Id. at 1619.