I have an MS in statistics, teach graduate statistics to econ PhD students (essentially; it's an 'econometrics' class); do research on statistical methods, etc.

I have an MS in statistics, teach graduate statistics to econ PhD students (essentially; it's an 'econometrics' class); do research on statistical methods, etc. I'm really sympathetic to your point. I would not want the guilt or innocence of myself, a family member, a friend, etc depend on the numeracy and statistical literacy of a jury, with the stats explained to them through lawyers (even my own!) As to the OP, the key sentence for me is: > ...the fire had been started by a discarded cigarette, ... the other two explanations were even more implausible Only TWO other possible explanations for the cause of a fire!?!?! Regardless of the word choice, I think the appeals court has a better intuitive understanding of some of the pitfalls of model-based Bayesian statistics than the OP (namely, if you accidentally put zero weight on parts of the prior, you will necessarily put zero weight on those parts of the posterior). edit: if I'm going to be listing credentials, I should point out that my econ phd is in econometrics; I don't want to give the impression that my MS in stats is a sufficient credential to teach econ phd students.