From Furious of Feltham

[lathany]

One of this evening's news headlines is a story about a mother whose conviction for the murder of her children was overturned. As a result of this, the BBC website produced a page commenting on the suitability of one of the witnesses, namely Sir Roy Meadow.

Now, Sir Roy belongs to a class of people who really annoy me. Being responsible for convicting an innocent woman ? No (well, actually yes, but not specifically what I'm complaining about). It is because he is a non-statistician claiming to be an expert on statistics.

This happens... far, far too often. Doctors are particularly guilty of it because the use of their own data in the field of medical statistics makes a vocal minority think they know how to interpret all the results. But the lack of statistical training really, really shows. And it gives those of us who actually work in the field a bad name.

Grrrrr.

Comments

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

I reckon this kind of thing happens right across the range of professions. I am constantly irritated by people making ill-conceived judgements about scientific stuff; GM foods, biowarfare, MMR etc, where people with a basic grounding in science would tell what was tosh from what is reasonable. Unfortunately, most people in the media don't have a clue, so never pick up on the fallacies and errors that get propagated this way. Just like in court, there is often no-one who can pick up on inadequate knowledge or understanding.
Dr Meadow qualifies for annoying bloke in my book, beacuse as well as not understanding stats, he also clearly hasn't got a clue about genetics. It is likely that the cot death kids in the cases described all had genetic (and probably also environmental) factors that predisposed them to cot death.
And right across bioscience, statistics is a woefully under-taught (and in my case ill understood) part of data analysis.