Jonathon,
Statistical proof is only accepted in academia. Depending upon your POV, this may or may not be a good thing, when one is facing civil, or criminal charges.
Finding proof for either civil or criminal charges is a slightly different matter.
IANAL, but your statements are misleading. Statistics are often used in both criminal and civil cases. Look at the DNA evidence in the OJ trial (OK, maybe a bad example), or the evidence that breast implants don't cause various ailments (probably another bad example :-). Both of these examples are based on statistics. IMO, part of the problem with juries (and public discourse in general) today is that anecdotal evidence is often accepted, when that evidence is clearly not statistically significant. The examples I cited previously illustrate this - the four horsemen are a similar example for public policymaking. Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon@dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: on web page Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------