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

Re: Stats Blindness

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Although you're out by a factor of 2-ish since not all homosexuals are male. And then there's the fact that 2-5% is a Kinsey-style figure, so in fact includes bisexuals.

None of which invalidates your basic observation that it's a "Where do we draw the line" question... Still, if I wanted to touch on the politics as well as the stats I'd throw in socio-economic group as a factor and then there'd be something to argue over !