Reading

Tiny numbers

Breyer, S. 1993. Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Towards effective risk regulation. Excerpts from Chpt 1.

Felsot, A.S. 1998. Numbers, numbers everywhere---and not a drop of meaning. Excerpts.

Mercury: Our central case study this semester

Bolger and Schwetz. 2002. Mercury and health. New England Journal of Medicine 347: 1735-1736.

Science: Some key ideas

Pease and Bull. 2000. Science for Business, Law and Journalism. Chapter 4. Models are the building blocks of science. Chapter 5. All models are false. But some are still useful.

Questions for class discussion

Methods and processes

1. Our focus this semester is on the methods that scientists use to gather and analyze data, and to critque scientific information, rather than the factual details of any particular case study. What is the advantage of focussing on method and processes, as opposed to facts?

2. The IRAC template is a method that law students learn to analyze cases, and this semester you will learn several templates useful for analyzing scientific problems. Why is it advantageous for law students to learn the IRAC template? What diverse types of situations can be analyzed with this one method?

Risk and Uncertainty: Basic concepts

3. Explain what we mean by a "1 in a million risk of death, per year." How many deaths from this risk would we expect in the entire U.S. (with 280 million people)?

4. Distinguish between "uncertainty" and "risk." Provide an example.

5. Explain "part per million." Explain the relation between ppm and 1 mg/L. Break "mg/L" apart: Each of the four symbols ("m", "g", "/" and "L") means something. What?

Models

6. Give an example of a model (not drawn from science). What does this model substitute for?

7. The Table in Bolger and Schwetz contains a number of models. Find 3 models in this Table. For each model, state what it represents (that is what is it a surrogate of). Also state one major assumption implicit in the use of this model.