This article doesn't exactly focus on magical thinking, but it does emphasize the importance of a good grasp of scientific and mathematic principles, especially for attorneys and judges.
Michael I. Meyerson, University of Baltimore School of Law, has written Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, forthcoming in the Pepperdine Law Review for 2010. Here is the abstract.
This article will explore several areas in which judges, hampered by their mathematical ignorance, have permitted numerical analysis to subvert the goals of our legal system. In Part II, I will examine the perversion of the presumption of innocence in paternity cases, where courts make the counter-factual assumption that regardless of the evidence, prior to DNA testing, a suspect has a 50/50 chance of being the father. In Part III, I will explore the unnecessary injection of race into trials involving the statistics of DNA matching, even when race is entirely irrelevant to the particular case. Next, in Part IV, I will discuss how courts use race- and gender-based statistics to reduce damages in tort cases for women and racial minorities, and silently assert that past racism and sexism will continue. In the final section, I will examine how judges have improperly allocated the risk of error in cases such as securities fraud, so as to reward those who have attempted to manipulate stock prices illegally.
Download the article from SSRN here.
Comments