Talking tripe

You may often be called upon to argue a point or put something to witness which is dubious to say the least. Very occasionally you will have to put forward something which is complete garbage.

I was reminded of this in connection with the litigation about the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland. This is the Collider which is over 16 miles long, which can smash particles together in a way never before seen and aims to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang at the commencement of the universe. It went live on 10th September. There has been litigation attempting to stop the experiment proceeding on the grounds that it could give rise to a black hole which would swallow up and destroy the earth. Scientists involved (and external review scientist) doubt that any black hole could be created, but take the view since any that was created would be extremely small and disappear in less than a billionth of a second that there is no risk. Whilst obviously any risk of the end of the world would be taken a bit more seriously than a small risk of another kind, there does not seem any real scientific basis for concern, albeit that some scientists are against the project.

Since I regard the science behind the legal challenge (which was unsuccessful, although whether there will be further attempts to pursue it remains to be seen: although the world did not end the assertion is that at some stage it could not that it would necessarily happen on the first day) as at best dubious, I assume that the lawyers conducting the case may well have found it difficult to know precisely how to put forward the proposition that was extremely difficult to justify. Having said that, that would probably be better than the alternative position they could have found themselves in. Although lawyers will always try their best regardless of what they think of the case, sometimes you have a strong view as to whether your case is right or wrong. If you thought that there was a real risk of the world ending, and that you were the only person able to prevent that cataclysm by winning the case, the pressure upon you would be somewhat extreme to say the least. You could not be playing for bigger stakes than that.

Occasionally in scientific matters people will take bizarre views of the unknown. A classic example was the introduction of the railways in the 19th century. I do not know upon what the cataclysmic view of rail travel was based, but then various people suggested that travelling at 60 miles an hour or so was too much for the human body. In particular there were suggestions that it would be too much for women, and that the effect would be to throw them into sexual frenzies in which they would not be able to control themselves. (One cannot help feeling that various repressed Victorian imaginations were running riot here). Needless to say, since it is obvious that such female behaviour has not been a noted feature of rail travel then or since, all of these dire predictions (or wishful thinking) failed to come to pass. It is an illustration of the fact that when dealing with the unknown you can make the most outrageously ludicrous suggestions without anyone actually having definite proof that you are wrong.

The worst thing I ever had to contend with in the course of running a case was my client's suggestion that a Martian spaceship had landed in his back garden during the course of the events of which he made complaint (unlawful eviction by his landlord). There was no point doing anything other than meeting this head on. Therefore he gave this as part of his account of overall events. Dealing with that part of his evidence in argument was difficult. However I merely pointed out that the landlord knew that the tenant was prone to making bizarre statements of that kind, and I not only put that to the landlord in cross examination but suggested that he sought to profit by it by working on the basis that the tenant would never be believed. As I pointed out to the judge, independent evidence showed that the tenant's belongings had been smashed up and he had been forced out of the house and the locks changed. The judge seemed to agree with me that it wasn't the Martians who did that.

If you are ever driven to put in cross examination as part of your case something which is nonsense, or refer to it, if you cannot put a positive gloss on it then the best thing to do is to deal with it as quickly as possible. Any tripe is bad, but the longer you spend on the tripe the worse it gets.