Interestingly I've been writing my most recent article with a postgrad medical student on toxicology, the topic being toxic remains following conflicts, why they're bad for the environment and public health, and the obligations for cleanup and compensation. And I was just noticing the ways we look at the issue differently.

She saw this complex physical web of conflicting pathways, vectors, environmental conditions, and potential responses in the body that may or may not actually be happening, only there's a case in some lab work and we need bigger sample sizes for epidemiological studies to make a connection, in the meantime there's some uncertainty so we can't say too much except what this mass of studies suggests, which is definitely something but a bit of a wash -- but then a kind of superficial view of how conflicts actually work and how it got there (like "It's war. People shoot tanks and then tank husks, bullets, and bomb fragments are left lying around."). Whereas I probably saw it the other way around, with this complex social web of conflicting roles, duties, incentives, expectations, etc, across different social groups -- soldiers on the ground, battlefield conditions, the command structure, SOPs and legal restraints and who makes/enforces those?, how occupation & reconstruction is managed on paper & in fact, including any cleanup duties or dealing with the civilian population. There's a lot more to it than "It's war and people shoot things", but then there's this "risk" we have to deal with, which the law has to say something about, but it's not a status you can just legislate obviously. You have to ground it in some scientifically valid process...

So it was good we could get both narratives together, but honestly they're a bit of a misfit and it was sometimes a challenge to "talk to each other". I mean, what do you do when the science is a messy web of more or less certain statements, while the obligations need you to check just the right boxes to pin them on people, keeping in mind the boxes you have to check in the science camp are usually different than the boxes you have to check in the legal camp. Actually I was better than most lawyers since I did my LLM work on use of scientific evidence in international law. So I was ready for it & rolled with it. But other people above me supervising the paper didn't have the same sensitivity to it, and pressured me a bit & were more ready to sensationalize the science somewhat. Ideally you want a toxicologist that's sensitive to the social context and a lawyer that's sensitive to what science can and can't say, but it's a challenge. I mean, what you figure out is it's not just about different knowledge-sets... There's some worldview that comes with each camp, and some mutual naivete about what's involved on the other side of the fence.

Well it's been a very interesting & educational experience for me anyway. I should probably write a book on the connections & tensions between science & law; it's interesting enough.

Edit: Some of you may be interested in seeing the article. We published it recently, and you can get it here -- (http://hrn.or.jp/eng/activity/area/iraq/press-release10-years-after-the-war-innocent-new-lives-are-still-dying-and-suffering-in-iraq-human-r/)
If you see sensationalized language, it was probably added by someone else, since I'm wired to be more academic & technical in my style, and personally I think it makes a better impression in the end.