up:: Tags:: #🌱 <% tp.file.cursor(3) %> Links:: <% tp.file.cursor(4) %> # Meadows Law Named after a British pediatrician who declared that when crib deaths within a family are examined, “one is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless there is proof to the contrary.” In the 1999 case of the attorney Sally Clark, who had lost two infant sons, the doctor testified that since the probability of a crib death in an affluent nonsmoking family is 1 in 8,500, the probability of two crib deaths is the square of that number, 1 in 72 million. Clark was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Appalled statisticians pointed out the mistake: crib deaths within a family are not independent, because siblings may share a genetic predisposition, the home may have elevated risk factors, and the parents may have reacted to the first tragedy by taking misguided precautions that increased the chance of a second. Clark was released after a second appeal (on different grounds), and in the following years hundreds of cases based on similar errors had to be reviewed.