Something to Consider When Considering a State of the Art Defense
When putative cause and effect are perceived to be closer, in time, the degree of belief in the alleged causal nexus increases. That's one way to look at the results of a new study on how people perceive causal relationships in time being reported at MindHacks. But how does that explain the ease with which many juries find a link between a decades old exposure and a modern case of mesothelioma? Perhaps because too often defendants fail to adequately explain the long and difficult path from surmise and suspicion to confirmation of the link; and, because they often fail to demonstrate (sometimes due to judges who prevent it) in a detailed time line all of the intervening and nowadays usually superseding causes.
