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

[lathany.livejournal.com]

what about all those perfectly good doctors who get a bad name from the few bad apples who bandy around statistics?

<grin>

I appreciate that it ain't just statisticians that get annoyed at Sir Roy. Obviously other doctors do too.

I am in no way defending the deliberate misuse of emotive "statistics" that appears to have occurred in this case.

Unfortunately this wasn't the issue. It wasn't a deliberate misuse of emotive stats, but simply that he didn't know his a*se from his elbow when it came to calculating probabilities. What he did was to say that something had a vanishingly small chance of being the case when it was actually pretty large. I.e. suggesting that a accidental death was 1 in several million when it was actually a large two digit percentage.

A little like him telling the patient of your example that they had a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of dying if their aneurism burst when the actual figure was 9 in 10 - to compare on a rough scale.

I am very often asked for figures by my punters to help them decide what they want to do e.g. have an operation, try one particular treatment or another.

And you have my sympathy. Nor would I be annoyed at a doctor who got his figures wrong in this instance.

What I'm cross about is this Sir Roy has taken the stand for a number of serious court cases (murder, for god's sakes) not to give medical evidence (for which he is qualified) but to give wrong statistics.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Oh dear god...

Did you have to start a discussion on the misuse of statistics and expert testimony a day before my Torts exam?

Trust me, my frustration mirrors your own. Indeed, it is growing to immense proportions, and may dwarf the sun soon...

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

OK, I take yr point! Though I would argue that emotive figures were used (whether deliberately or not); standing up and telling a jury of non-medical non-statisticians that the chances of this happenning were teeny tiny teeny does strongly imply the unsaid so she probably bumped them off, didn't she..." . I doubt that the bloke thought she was innocent. if you ever want to have a discussion about Munchausen By Proxy, invite me round for tea and we'll whisper so the beebies don't need therapy...