whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution

[Black Unicorn]

On 7 Jun 1996, Clay Olbon II wrote:

> 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,

And so you thought you would engage in legal commentary, of course. :)

> 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.  

Statistical evidence is fairly strictly regulated actually in a judicial 
context.

e.g., People v. Collins, 438 P.2d 33 (1968) (prohibiting mathamatical odds and 
statistical evidence from use in identification and requireing strict 
foundation to be laid before any probability evidence will be admitted); 
Cole v. Cole, 328 S.E.2.d 446 (1985) (discussing the nature of 
probability in relation to the scope of the evidence presented); Frye v. 
U.S., 293 F. 1013 (D.C.Cir 1923) (estlablishing the rule that scientific 
evidence must be treated with a different standard even when presented 
by certified experts.  specifically that it must be 'generally accepted in 
the scientific community);  See Generally, L.J. Cohen, The Probably and 
the Provable (1977).

> 	Clay
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Clay Olbon II            | Clay.Olbon at dynetics.com
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