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Law, Probability and Risk Advance Access published online on May 5, 2007
Law, Probability and Risk, doi:10.1093/lpr/mgm003
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© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

On the (ab)use of statistics in the legal case against the nurse Lucia de B

Ronald Meester{dagger}

Department of Mathematics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Marieke Collins and Richard Gill

Utrecht University, PO Box 80.010, 3508 TA, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Michiel van Lambalgen

Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, 1012 CP, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

{dagger} Email: rmeester{at}cs.vu.nl

Received on 24 March 2006. Revised on 15 November 2006. Accepted on 20 March 2007.


  Abstract

We discuss the statistics involved in the legal case of the nurse Lucia de B. in the Netherlands, 2003–2004. Lucia de B. witnessed an unusually high number of incidents during her shifts, and the question arose as to whether this could be attributed to chance. We discuss and criticize the statistical analysis of Henk Elffers, a statistician who was asked by the prosecutor to write a statistical report on the issue. We discuss several other possibilities for statistical analysis. Our main point is that several statistical models exist, leading to very different predictions or perhaps different answers to different questions. There is no such thing as a `best’ statistical analysis.

Keywords: statistical analysis; legal case; likelihood method; conditioning; Baysian approach; subjective choices; roster data


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