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I think the point I was trying to make was that the error was already there in the report that preceded the court case. It should have been nipped in the bud then! Alison -----Original Message----- From: Bland, M. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 25 July 2005 10:39 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Roy Meadow The defence certainly had statistical advice at the time of the appeal, because I was asked for some help by their advisor. I am pretty sure this was Phil Dawid of University College. I had posted comments at the time of the first trial, either on this list or Allstat, about the risks of cot death. I don't think we should beat ourselves up too much about this. At the time of the first trial it was reported in the media that pathology evidence was that the second child had suffered a violent death, and that this led to a reappraisal of the pathology on the first death. The probability evidence was not the key evidence. Unless you hear all the evidence in a case, it is rash to jump to conclusions and I don't think we should do so from what we read in the newspapers. The Appeal Court judges did not think that the statistical evidence was important. Martin Macfarlane, Alison wrote: > > There was quite a lot of correspondence on this list at the time of > the Sally Clark case, but did anyone take it any further then? > > One issue is that at the time of the publication of the TSO report on > the cot death studies, the Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and > Deaths in Infancy did not have any statisticians on its advisory > bodies. It did at an earlier stage, but Bev Botting and I were there > as representatives of OPCS/ONS and the National Perinatal Epidemiology > Unit respectively, in other words as stakeholders rather than > statisticians. Needless to say we passed comments on statistical issues. > > Alison > > Alison Macfarlane > Department of Midwifery > City University > 24 Chiswell Street > London EC1Y 4TY > Tel (44)(0) 207 040 5832 > Fax (44)(0) 207 040 5866 > Email [log in to unmask] > > ****************************************************** Please note > that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the > sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use > your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically > to [log in to unmask] > ******************************************************* -- *************************************************** J. Martin Bland Prof. of Health Statistics Dept. of Health Sciences Seebohm Rowntree Building Area 2 University of York Heslington York YO10 5DD Email: [log in to unmask] Phone: 01904 321334 Fax: 01904 321382 Web site: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mb55/ *************************************************** ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] ******************************************************* ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] *******************************************************