Explaining Statistical Significance to a Jury | Episode 88

What happens when jurors’ gut instincts clash with your expert’s data? In this episode, IMS Senior Jury Consulting Advisor Chris Dominic teams up with Affiliate Advisor Steve Pomerantz, PhD, and Trial Consultant Michelle Cooper, JD, to tackle one of the courtroom’s trickiest challenges: making statistical significance make sense to the jury.  

From framing fairness and randomness in everyday language to using simple checklists that keep jurors focused, this conversation is packed with practical strategies to help trial teams turn complex numbers into clear storytelling.  

If you have ever wondered how to explain science by “speaking juror”, this episode offers a roadmap. Listen now or watch the original LinkedIn Live here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/imselevate-explainingstatistica7402744841094537216/theater/

Learn about Steve Pomerantz’s expertise: https://imslegal.com/team/steve-pomerantz  

Learn about Michelle Cooper’s expertise: https://imslegal.com/team/michelle-cooper-jd

Explore IMS’s litigation support services: https://imslegal.com/services 

IMS has delivered strategic litigation consulting and expert witness services to leading global law firms and Fortune 500 companies for more than 30 years, in more than 65,000 cases. IMS consultants become an extension of your legal team from pre-suit investigation services to discovery and then on to arbitration and trial. Learn more at imslegal.com.

Transcript

Adam Bloomberg: Hello everyone. Today we're diving into the topic of statistical significance. Explaining this concept to a jury might seem simple on the surface, but it can create real challenges in the courtroom—the differences between what feels significant and what the statistics actually tell us. 

Here to unpack how jurors’ intuition can clash with dense mathematical analysis is Dr. Steve Pomerantz from our advisory group and Michelle Cooper from our trial consulting team. And leading our discussion is Chris Dominic, Senior Strategy and Jury Consulting Advisor here at IMS. Chris, over to you. 

Chris Dominic: Thanks, Adam. We're digging into something deceptively simple but hugely important in the courtroom today: the tension between what the math says is significant and what people think is significant. Steve, you've always described yourself as a teacher. 

Steve Pomerantz: But obviously it's going to be accompanied with the actual scientific information that I’m going to supplement it with. 

Chris Dominic: Yeah, Steve, how do you handle the scatter plot and outliers and all that? 

Steve Pomerantz: Well, again, I like to think that intuition and science have to merge and agree. Sometimes you have to move one to the other or vice versa. When you look at a graph like Michelle was showing us, you can see points that clearly don't make sense. You could probably bring the statistics to bear that prove mathematically those points don't make sense. But the next step is to drill down and look at those points and see what's going on. Why are those points the way they are? 

When you have these outliers from either an intuitive or statistical standpoint, there’s always something to learn—something going on that we didn’t expect. And that’s where you can merge agreement between these two perspectives. 

Chris Dominic: OK, now let's look at something real that actually shows up in cases. Michelle, could you bring up the immunization record? 

Michelle Cooper: OK, here's where the two kinds of significance collide. A juror sees a clean checklist for years, and then something seems like it's missing. That feels like causation. But the math might say it's not significant at all. So how do you bridge that gap? 

Steve Pomerantz: Again, I think it's important to merge intuition and the scientific result. They both have to end up on the same page or jurors are not going to be happy. Sometimes the math might be mis-specified, the model might be incorrect, or missing factors—or it might have too many confusing factors. By modifying it, it moves toward intuition. Or sometimes our intuition is just wrong. 

If we think about where the issues are and focus on specific situations more carefully, we can refine our intuition. Bridging the gap ultimately requires merging the scientific perspective with people's intuition. 

Chris Dominic: That makes a lot of sense, particularly considering so many people don't like being told their intuition is wrong. Michelle, do you have any final thoughts? 

Michelle Cooper: Yeah, absolutely. I think the checklist is a great thing to put together for this type of case, especially because in our juror pool, we often have what we call checklist jurors—people who want to see something laid out point by point. See where the pattern requires why. 

The best way to do that in a checklist is: you've got your four points of immunization, right? Check, check, check—and then suddenly you've got an X or something else that doesn’t match. That is something to pay attention to. Or, as Steve pointed out, maybe it isn’t necessarily something scary, but it is something to focus on. Something as simple as a checklist can help jurors follow along with the scientific information. 

Chris Dominic: Thank you for being our trial consultant today, Michelle, and Steve, thank you for being our expert guide. Much appreciated. Adam, it's all yours. 

Adam Bloomerg: IMS has served trusted law firms and corporations worldwide for more than 30 years and over 65,000 cases. As a strategic partner for the full case life cycle, our integrated teams provide specialized advisory support, expert witness services, litigation consulting, visual advocacy, and presentation technology to elevate strategies and protect hard-earned reputations. Learn more at imslegal.com.