On the mishandling of probabilities in Lamotte & Wells' commentary on J.P. Michaud, G. Moreau, Predicting the visitation of carcasses by carrion-related insects under different rates of degree-day accumulation

Abstract

LaMotte and Wells re-analyzed and criticized one of our articles in which we proposed a novel statistical test for predicting postmortem interval from insect succession data. Using simple mathematical examples, we demonstrate that LaMotte and Wells erred because their analyses are based on an erroneous interpretation of the nature of probabilities that disregards more than 300 years of scientific literature on probability combination. We also argue that the methods presented in our article, more specifically the use of degree-day-based logistic regression analysis to model succession, was a positive contribution to the fields of forensic entomology and carrion ecology, which LaMotte and Wells forgot to mention by instead focusing on issues that were either trivial or did not exist.

Keywords: Bayes product of odds method; Forensic modeling; Probability combination.