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Multiple Comparisons and the Law
Deborah Mayo recently reblogged and commented on Nathan Schachtman’s blog post titled “Courts Can and Must Acknowledge Multiple Comparisons in Statistical Analyses.” (Mr Schachtman is not only a lawyer; he is also a lecturer at Columbia Law School and an expert on scientific evidence.) Moreover, because Mr Schachtman’s blog post and Dr Mayo’s comments on Schachtman’s post touch on an area we care about — the role of probability theory in law — we are re-reblogging both items below and shall comment on them in a future post.
Update (22 October 2014): We read Schachtman’s post on the multiple testing problem in law (see below), and we also read Dr Mayo’s comments to his post (ditto), and we were left scratching our heads. We’re not sure where they disagree. After all, isn’t it true that “data trolling” is bad science? And, if so, shouldn’t trial judges retain the discretion to exclude expert testimony based on multiple comparisons?
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“Courts Can and Must Acknowledge Multiple Comparisons in Statistical Analyses”
Nathan Schachtman, Esq., PC * October 14th, 2014
In excluding the proffered testimony of Dr. Anick Bérard, a Canadian perinatal epidemiologist in the Université de Montréal, the Zoloft MDL trial court discussed several methodological shortcomings and failures, including Bérard’s reliance upon claims of statistical significance from studies that conducted dozens and hundreds of multiple comparisons.[i] The Zoloft MDL court was not the first court to recognize the problem of over-interpreting the putative statistical significance of results that were one among many statistical tests in a single study. The court was, however, among a fairly small group of judges who have shown the needed statistical acumen in looking beyond the reported p-value or…
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Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Law, Philosophy
Tagged Deborah Mayo, Nathan Schachtman
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Martian Monday
We like drmickhead’s comment: “The fact that we have robots on another planet that will be photographing this event makes [us] inordinately happy.“
“The possibility of a general theory of emergency”
That is the subtitle of this fascinating paper — the full title of the paper is “Exception and Necessity: The Possibility of a General Theory of Emergency” — written by our colleague William Vazquez-Irizarry, a law professor at the University of Puerto Rico. In his paper, Professor Vazquez-Irizarry compares and contrasts the state of exception doctrine in public law with the doctrine of necessity in private law and develops a “general theory of emergency” common to both areas of law. The idea of a general theory of emergency is intriguing and original, but there is no reference in this paper to the work of Ronald Coase or John Rawls. That is, what would happen if rulers and the ruled could bargain with each other, either ex ante behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance or ex post (assuming, of course, zero transaction costs)? In either case, what rules or principles would we agree to for dealing with public and private emergencies? Would the rules for private emergencies be the same as the ones for public emergencies?
This is just a test …
Posted in Economics, Law, Philosophy
Tagged John Rawls, Necessity, Ronald Coase, State of Exception
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John Suh is not a lawyer
He is, however, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the CEO of LegalZoom. So, will new business models like LegalZoom and new technologies like Watson Debater make lawyers and law firms obsolete? We’ve just read Susan Beck’s excellent report “Emerging Technology Shapes Future of Law.” Among the things in her report that caught our attention was this particular passage (edited for clarity): Continue reading
Zombie Hunting Permits
What is the optimal number of zombies? Our friend Glen Whitman makes the case why this number might be greater than zero.
The city of Clarendon Hills, Illinois, has begun issuing zombie hunting permits. A permit system is typically used to limit the amount of something. Which raises an intriguing question: why does Clarendon Hills want to reduce the amount of zombie hunting? Apparently, there must be too few zombies!
This is not as absurd as it sounds. As Michael O’Hara argues in Chapter 16 of Economics of the Undead, “Zombies as an Invasive Species,” one potential solution to a zombie infestation is to encourage people to hunt zombies for sport. Initially, while the zombies are numerous and out of control, you wouldn’t want to limit this activity. But if zombie hunting became popular enough, then the zombies could be hunted into extinction — which would mean the death of a popular and enjoyable pastime. To prevent the overhunting of the zombie population, you would need to establish private zombie-hunting preserves (as O’Hara…
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“I am a Liberian, not a virus”
Check out #IamALiberianNotAVirus and this report by Yesha Callahan. Thanks to Shoana Cachelle for her video.
Watson Law?
Remember Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-winning supercomputer? According to this report in LTN (Law Technology News), IBM is developing Watson Debater, a computer that can synthesize rules and cases and argue different sides of a legal issue. Robert C. Weber, Senior Vice President of Legal & Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel at IBM United Kingdom, thinks that Watson is already able to pass any State’s bar exam. Mr Weber also notes that Watson is “developing the ability to put forth arguments in a logical way,” which could have “implications in the law.” (You don’t say?) What about for politics? (Hat tip: Ray Campbell, who blogs regularly at The Faculty Lounge.)
The future of law?
The Mission Playground Incident
Does this four-and-one-half-minute video depict a Tragedy of the Commons? Does it falsify or confirm the main tenets of the Coase Theorem? After all, “transaction costs” are low, yet we don’t we see any Coasean bargaining in this situation, or do we …? At last count (12 noon, 15 October 2014), this video has elicited over 450 comments on this San Francisco website (Uptown Almanac) and has been viewed over 321,000 times on YouTube. For our part, we agree with this comment from “VT Prof” (edited for clarity): Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Law
Tagged Coase Theorem, Property Rights, Tragedy of the Commons
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Nobel Prize 2014: Jean Tirole
Hola! We are reblogging an excellent post (see below) from Kevin Bryan, a professor of strategy at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, summing up some of the work of the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Jean Tirole. (Professor Bryan’s blog, a favorite of ours, is called A Fine Theorem.) The blog post below explains Jean Tirole and Eric Maskin’s work on “incomplete contracts.” Notice how the economic approach to contracts differs from the legal or doctrinal approach.
A Nobel Prize for applied theory – now this something I can get behind! Jean Tirole’s prize announcement credits him for his work on market power and regulation, and there is no question that he is among the leaders, if not the world leader, in the application of mechanism design theory to industrial organization; indeed, the idea of doing IO in the absence of this theoretical toolbox seems so strange to me that it’s hard to imagine anyone had ever done it! Economics is sometimes defined by a core principle that agents – people or firms – respond to incentives. Incentives are endogenous; how my bank or my payment processor or my lawyer wants to act depends on how other banks or other processors or other prosecutors act. Regulation is therefore a game. Optimal regulation is therefore a problem of mechanism design, and we now have mathematical tools that…
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