By: Nathan Schachtman, Esq., PC*
When the Supreme Court decided this case, I knew that some people would try to claim that it was a decision about the irrelevance or unimportance of statistical significance in assessing epidemiologic data. Indeed, the defense lawyers invited this interpretation by trying to connect materiality with causation. Having rejected that connection, the Supreme Court’s holding could address only materiality because causation was never at issue. It is a fundamental mistake to include undecided, immaterial facts as part of a court’s holding or the ratio decidendi of its opinion.
Interstitial Doubts About the Matrixx
Statistics professors are excited that the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion that ostensibly addressed statistical significance. One such example of the excitement is an article, in press, by Joseph B. Kadane, Professor in the Department of Statistics, in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. See Joseph B. Kadane, “Matrixx v. Siracusano: what do courts mean by ‘statistical significance’?” 11[x] Law, Probability and Risk 1 (2011).
Professor Kadane makes the sensible point that the allegations of adverse events did not admit of an analysis that would imply statistical significance or its absence. Id. at 5. See Schachtman, “The Matrixx – A Comedy of Errors” (April 6, 2011)”; David Kaye, ” Trapped in the Matrixx: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Need for Statistical Significance,” BNA Product Safety and Liability Reporter 1007 (Sept. 12, 2011). Unfortunately, the excitement has obscured Professor Kadane’s interpretation of the Court’s holding, and has led him astray in assessing the importance of the case. Continue reading
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