Sir, - Paul Cullen refers to a report on BSE in the Republic of Ireland by the British Food Standards Committee based on work by Dr Christl Donnelly of Imperial College London (The Irish Times, March 27th). His report highlights one statistic from that report: "The risk of eating meat contaminated with BSE in Ireland is about 220 times greater than in Britain". A Department of Agriculture spokesmen is headlined as dismissing it: "There are lies and damned lies and statistics. You can stick things in a mathematical model and come up with anything. The evidence doesn't support what this report is saying".
Dr Donnelly is a highly respected professional statistician in a university with a deservedly first-class international reputation. Her equivalent study of BSE in France has appeared in Nature. The Department of Agriculture spokesman has confirmed to me that his criticism is not misquoted by Paul Cullen, although it is apparently an extract from a more general discussion about the report. Surprisingly, he tells me that he has not even seen the report.
It ill behoves the Department of Agriculture to allow itself to be represented by such criticism. Were I to publish that "there are liars, damned liars and Department of Agriculture spokesmen", I should expect to be challenged by the Minister, if not by the Provost of TCD. Were I to invoke the above blanket criticism of mathematical modelling to undermine the many projections of the Department of Agriculture (many of which are undoubtedly based on the research of its able modellers) I should not expect plaudits from its spokesmen. Were I to do so without even glancing at the report, I should not be surprised at the impact on my professional reputation.
The Department spokesman is anxious, and perhaps rightly, that other governments may misuse such statistics in their attempt to preserve their place in a difficult market. He knows that other governments use statistics to mislead, and he knows this because that's what his Department does when it suits. But he blames the statistics.
The Department of Agriculture is perfectly capable of a reasoned and professional critical response. What would be most interesting to Irish Times readers would be to learn how the Department compares Dr Donnelly's analysis of the Irish data with that of the French data, using the same methodology, as published in Nature and as reported by Dick Ahlstrom (The Irish Times, December 14th, 2000). - Yours, etc.,
Prof John Haslett, Department of Statistics, Trinity College, Dublin 2.