A PAEDIATRICIAN whose expert evidence helped wrongly convict a woman of murdering her two babies relied heavily on his own "naive and grossly misleading" research, the General Medical Council (GMC) heard yesterday.
Professor Sir Roy Meadow, 72, not only breached his duties as a medical expert but misused statistics in an "outrageously distorted" way, it is alleged.
The professor, from Leeds, listened stoney-faced as his once-eminent reputation was torn apar
t during the hearing in central London, which is scheduled to last 19 days.
He is charged with one count of serious professional misconduct, which he denies, but the details of individual allegations stretch to ten pages.
The GMC heard that Prof Meadow "misused statistics without any qualification or caution as to how his figures should be approached".
His now infamous statement that there was just a "one in 73 million" chance that two babies from the same affluent family could suffer cot death was flawed, the hearing was told.
He arrived at the figure by squaring the probability for an affluent family suffering one cot death - one in 8,543.
The case was brought by Frank Lockyer, the father of 40-year-old Sally Clark, who spent three years in jail after being convicted of killing her sons Christopher and Harry.
The "one in 73 million" figure was used by the prosecution to argue that Mrs Clark must have killed her babies. But she was released by the Court of Appeal in January 2003 after judges ruled her conviction unsafe.
Speaking outside the hearing, Mr Lockyer said: "No-one is any longer in any doubt that the evidence on which my daughter was convicted was flawed. This is a question of the GMC assessing responsibility."
Asked how his daughter, who was not at yesterday's hearing and will not give evidence, was faring, he replied: "She is improving slowly. "
Prof Meadow also gave evidence in the trials of Donna Anthony in 1998 and Angela Cannings in 2002. Both were convicted of killing their children but later cleared. They attended yesterday's hearing.
Mrs Cannings, 42, from Cornwall, who was released in 2003, waited outside for the retired professor to arrive.
When he did, she shouted: "Any apologies for the families you destroyed?"
The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.
