David Kaye, a professor with the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, was quoted in the Jan. 17 online issue of Nature magazine, in an article headlined, "Statistics: Conviction by numbers."

The article, by Mark Buchanan, discusses how statistics confuse many people, even judges and juries.

Kaye pointed out that lawyers have a duty to select evidence that makes their case stronger.

"What the judge ends up hearing often comes from the two extreme ends of the distribution," Kaye told the reporter.

Buchanan also describes a reference manual on the use of scientific evidence, put together by the Federal Judicial Center. Kaye helped write the statistics chapter.

"But education is only palliative," Kaye said in the article. "I don't think there is any single way to ensure that statistics and other scientific evidence gets used accurately."

Read the article here.