The Experimental Society - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1412857031 ISBN 13: 9781412857031

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

This book examines society’s responses to many kinds of experimentation, focusing on both creation of and assessment of risks. As people seek new ways to make their lives safer and happier, the widespread process of experimentation claims victims. Some of these are people who directly and willingly accept the risks of experiments. By comparison, some are effectively experimental subjects in the hands of others who often may not even think of themselves as experimenting with the lives of consumers.

The Experimental Society covers a wide spectrum of products and activities, including those that radiate into the environment like nuclear power, hydrofracking, and asbestos. The book spotlights prescription drugs and substances used in the most ordinary consumer products such as salt, caffeine, and BPA in sippy cups. It also discusses the testing of new ways of thinking, including those related to social organization and processes, and even the law itself. A particular concern is the case in which the subjects of experiments are unaware that the experiments are taking place.

This lucidly written volume will be useful to practicing lawyers who specialize in personal injury law, and law professors who teach such subjects as torts and products liability, medicine, and science. Physicians and scientists in various branches of medicine will find it provocative, as will political scientists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.

About this title

About the Author:

Marshall S. Shapo, Frederic P. Vose Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, has studied and written about injury law for fifty years. His published work includes An Injury Law Constitution and Experimenting with the Consumer.

Review:

“This original book argues that humans are subjects in a wide variety of ‘experiments.’  Shapo takes an extremely broad view of human experimentation, from carefully designed and controlled randomized trials to inadvertent unplanned experiments concomitant with technological and social change. . . . Each chapter explores in detail a few case studies, emphasizing the legal issues and processes. . . . There are many provocative discussions of good and bad decisions, such as the Challenger launch. A short chapter on worker safety is followed by a good chapter on consumer products. . . . Excellent details on the well-chosen case studies with compelling focus on the legal process intersecting changing scientific information and certainty. Summing Up: Recommended.”

--M. Gochfeld, Choice

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1412857031
• ISBN 13: 9781412857031
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408
• Editor: Shapo Marshall S.