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The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: the individual level, which is characterized by the citizens' effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens' failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare.Dispelling this "tragedy of the risk-perception commons," we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.

In this response to Allen and Pardo’s Relative Plausibility and Its Critics, I argue that while relative plausibility presents certain advantages over probabilism, it also fails to avoid several problems that the authors attribute to probabilism. I note that relative plausibility can be understood as probabilism under certain constraints that characterise a typical trial. I then argue that two of Allen and Pardo’s central problems with probabilism—the absence of an objective means for measuring the strength of evidence and the conjunction problem—apply to both probabilism and relative plausibility, although neither problem poses a serious threat to accuracy. I conclude that each theory, despite these problems, is useful for certain purposes—relative plausibility better models how advocates present cases and how jurors process information; probabilism serves as a valuable tool for modelling relevance and prejudice.

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The decision to issue a preliminary injunction is enormously consequential; it has been likened to "judgment and execution before trial." Yet, courts regularly say that our primary tool for promoting truth seeking at trial-the Federal Rules of Evidence-does not apply at preliminary injunction hearings. Judges frequently consider inadmissible evidence to make what may be the most important ruling in the case. This Article critically examines this widespread evidentiary practice. In critiquing courts' justifications for abandoning the Rules in the preliminary injunction context, this Article introduces a new concept: "meta-evidence." Meta-evidence is evidence of what evidence will be presented at trial. I demonstrate that much evidence introduced at the preliminary injunction stage is, in fact, meta-evidence. And I show why meta-evidence that initially appears inadmissible under the Rules is often, in fact, admissible. Applying the Rules at the preliminary injunction stage, then, would not exclude nearly as much evidence as courts may have assumed. I offer two proposals for how courts should use the Rules at the preliminary injunction phase. More ambitiously, I suggest courts should apply the Rules with an exception directly tailored to the dangers of limiting admissible evidence when the parties are under time pressure. Alternatively, I suggest that courts simply recognize when evidence is actually meta-evidence and weigh it appropriately. Courts should acknowledge that meta-evidence is probative only to the extent it tends to show the proponent will produce admissible evidence at trial.