ATRA warns made-for-litigation research is reshaping vaccine, Tylenol and climate debates.
WASHINGTON) — A new report released by the American Tort Reform Association pulls back the curtain on a “trial lawyer playbook” tactic impacting American families daily — made-for-litigation science.
“As a mom, I’m incredibly concerned by the unsettling infiltration of junk science that we’re seeing shape public policy in our country,” said Lauren Sheets Jarrell, ATRA’s vice president and counsel for civil justice policy. “Americans need to know the truth about what’s really driving this nationwide surge in lawsuits related to issues that impact our families like Tylenol, vaccines, and climate change.”
“The Junk Science Playbook” explains how a coordinated network of researchers, labs, advocacy groups, and expert witnesses manufactures the appearance of scientific consensus then channels those claims into courtrooms and regulatory debates to generate profit at the expense of sound science and public trust.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a trial lawyer and ally of the mass tort bar, is at the center of much of this controversy.
“As HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. is spouting the same junk science theories to make nationwide policy decisions that trial lawyers have used in courtrooms for years,” Sheets Jarrell said. “We’re seeing ‘research’ that couldn’t stand up in court being repackaged as public health policy and then handed back to the trial bar as ammunition for the next wave of lawsuits.”
A Coordinated Junk Science Machine
The report outlines how quasi-academic entities, litigation support labs, and agenda-driven nonprofits produce studies that conflict with mainstream science, often using flawed methods and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
It also points to open-access and pay-to-publish journals that provide an easy pathway for weak or unreliable studies to enter public discourse, where they are amplified by coordinated campaigns. A small cadre of well-compensated expert witnesses then translate those claims into courtroom testimony, with outcomes hinging on whether judges rigorously enforce evidentiary standards.
“This is a sophisticated machine built by trial lawyers and their allies to manufacture scientific-sounding claims on demand,” Sheets Jarrell said. “When real science doesn’t support their theories, they commission new studies, drive media narratives, and shop for friendly forums until they get the result they want. That may be profitable for a select few lawyers, but we all pay the price when we pay higher prices for fewer options on the market.”
On average, American families pay $5,215 each year in a hidden “tort tax” due to excessive litigation costs.
Emerging Flashpoints: Tylenol, Vaccines, Climate
ATRA’s report highlights long-discussed junk science concerns in talc and glyphosate (Roundup) litigation, and also calls out three emerging areas where the mass tort bar is deploying the junk science playbook in full force: acetaminophen (Tylenol) litigation, vaccine safety disputes, and climate “attribution science.”
In the Tylenol cases, federal courts have already rejected plaintiffs’ experts for cherry-picking data and relying on untested, litigation-driven methodologies, yet new “studies” with overlapping authors are promoted to revive claims and influence policymakers.
At the same time, RFK Jr.’s overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule has drawn strong criticism from medical leaders and sparked new legal and policy battles.
“The same people pushing junk science in courtrooms are now writing the footnotes for national health policy,” Jarrell said. “Scaling back childhood vaccine recommendations on ideological grounds, while trial lawyers position themselves to sue manufacturers under new state liability theories, is a dangerous collision of public health and profit motive.”
The report also warns about the increased use of climate “attribution science” as a litigation tool to connect specific weather events to particular companies. Now, the litigation-aligned methodology has found its way into the latest federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence as a dedicated climate science chapter. ATRA cautions that embedding contested methodologies into a key reference for federal judges risks normalizing novel liability theories before they are properly tested in court.
“If we’re going to combat this, we need judges to enforce evidence rules, scientific journals must uphold real peer review, and we all have to look more critically at these attention-grabbing ‘studies’ and decipher who the real beneficiary is,” Sheets Jarrell said. “Sound public policy — and public trust — depend on getting the science right.”
The full report and its recommended reforms are available at ATRA.org.
About the American Tort Reform Association
Founded in 1986, ATRA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and is the nation’s first organization dedicated exclusively to reforming the civil justice system through education and legislative enactment. ATRA acts as a nationwide network of state-based liability reform coalitions backed by 154,000 grassroots supporters. ATRA works to bring greater fairness, predictability and efficiency to America’s civil justice system. Those efforts have resulted in the enactment of state and federal laws that make the system fairer for everyone.
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