In a move that’s got major implications for how courts handle science, the National Academies of Sciences just told a group of state attorneys general to kick rocks. Multiple Republican attorneys general had demanded that the organization remove a chapter on climate science from its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, claiming it wasn’t “balanced” enough. The NAS basically said “no thanks” and decided to keep the chapter exactly where it is.

Here’s the backstory: back in February, attorneys general from several states (including Montana, which published the letter) sent a request asking the NAS to explain why they included climate science in the manual and what they’d do to prevent similar “advocacy-based chapters” in the future. They gave the organization until March 2 to respond. The NAS took their sweet time before finally responding just two days before the deadline, and their answer was hilariously brief. In just two sentences, they basically said “we used the same rigorous procedures for this chapter that we use for all our chapters, and it’s staying online”.

What makes this moment significant is what it represents. These attorneys general were essentially trying to use political pressure to determine which established science gets taught to judges. That’s genuinely dangerous territory. If they succeed with climate science, every other scientific field becomes a target. Want to challenge chapters on vaccines? On evolution? On forensic evidence? You just need enough political power to make noise.

The real pushback came from something unexpected though. A bunch of the other chapter authors published an open letter calling out what was happening. They pointed out that if political actors can just veto entire fields of science whenever they feel like it, then the whole system falls apart. The peer review process loses meaning. The quality of scientific education for judges tanks. And the courts end up making decisions without proper understanding of the evidence.

The long-term stakes here are what keep scientists up at night. If chapters keep getting deleted every time they upset politicians, eventually the best scientists and legal scholars will stop contributing to these manuals. Why risk the backlash? As quality declines over time, judges become less equipped to handle complex cases involving scientific evidence. That hurts all of us, because it means legal decisions affecting everything from environmental policy to healthcare get made by people without proper scientific context.

The NAS’s pushback matters because it sets a precedent. They’re essentially saying that scientific integrity isn’t negotiable, even when there’s political pressure. That’s the kind of institutional backbone we need right now.