Biostatistical concepts and methods in the legal setting

Biostatistical concepts and methods apply to various problems arising in actual U.S. legal cases. These involve: measures of association, assessing the potential effect of omitted variables and the Peters-Belson approach to regression. In particular, we present the inapplicability of Fisher's exact test in the case where the process determining the marginal sample sizes is not independent of the hypothesis under study by the 2 x 2 table. We adapt Cornfield's procedure to assess whether the omission of another factor could have contributed to a non-significant finding of the effect of the major factor under investigation. Finally, we demonstrate the relevance and utility of the Peters-Belson regression methodology to equal pay and promotion cases.