General Acceptance (Frye Standard)
Definition
The admissibility rule from Frye v. United States (DC Cir. 1923) requiring a technique to be generally accepted in the relevant scientific community before its results can be admitted. Replaced in federal courts by Daubert in 1993; still used in some US states.
- Origin case
- Frye v. United States, DC Circuit, 1923
- Test
- General acceptance in the relevant scientific community
- Federal status
- Replaced by Daubert in 1993
- Current use
- Still applied in some US states
Common questions
Why did Daubert replace Frye at the federal level?+
Congress and the Supreme Court concluded that Federal Rule of Evidence 702 required judges to assess reliability and methodology directly rather than deferring entirely to whether a scientific community had broadly accepted a technique, since general acceptance alone can lag behind or diverge from actual scientific validity.
What practical difference does it make to an expert witness whether a state follows Frye or Daubert?+
Under Frye the key question is whether the expert's method is generally accepted in the field, often argued through publications and professional consensus, while under Daubert the expert additionally has to be prepared to defend the method's testability, known error rate, and peer review before the judge as gatekeeper.
Can a novel forensic technique be excluded under Frye even if it is scientifically sound?+
Yes, a technique that is methodologically valid but has not yet achieved broad acceptance in the relevant scientific community can fail the Frye test purely on the acceptance criterion, which is one of the main criticisms levelled against the standard.
Related terms
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- Gatekeeping
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- Opinion Evidence
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