From what this article indicates, a lot of legal citations based on scientific statistics are more like a bad game of Telephone (Chinese Whispers) than reliable bodies of previously established evidence that courts down the line can draw on.
In this case, an unsupported comment by someone with a monetary interest in showing how his sex offender treatment was best gets quoted in a pop psychology magazine, then mentioned in a filing by the US Solictor General, then quoted as justification for draconian legal measures by a Supreme Court Justice, and from there cited by courts across the nation for similar purposes.
You can't have an intelligent debate (let alone trial) about stuff if that's how shoddy your research is. It does make you wonder what other "statistics" we base our lives on that are similarly unfounded.
How a dubious statistic convinced U.S. courts to approve of indefinite detention
