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Today we’re boldly going where lawyers usually fear to tread (at least alone) – into the realm of epidemiology, albeit perhaps loosely defined. Why? Well, we do have to come up with things to write about, and there’s only so much preemption theorizing that even we can do before it sounds like we’re babbling.
Also,

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The New York Times ticked us off again this morning.

Not as much as it did last month, but it annoyed us nonetheless.

The front page of the Week in Review section has a piece titled “Making Sense of the Great Suicide Debate.” Here’s a link.

The article quotes (and appropriately identifies as

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You’re stuck with Bexis this time. The recent Zandi v. Wyeth decisions that we’re going to discuss are too close for comfort to some matters that Herrmann’s defending – so he’s taken a pass on this one. You may now flee for the exits. Line forms on the right. No pushing.
We’ve remarked before that

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We’re so used to adverse decisions out of the District of Minnesota – what with the defibrillator MDLs “distinguishing” Buckman into near oblivion, and the heart valve MDL persisting in certifying classes despite being told not to by the Eighth Circuit – that good news from that district is like a breath of fresh air.

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Scientific experts of course require that statistical significance be established at a p-value of .05, which is a 95 percent confidence interval. The 95 percent confidence interval is completely unrelated to the burden of proof in a civil case — the “preponderance of the evidence.”

We nonetheless frequently hear plaintiffs maintain that “the burden of