I have often been deeply disappointed by the level of statistical understanding demonstrated by people working in the life sciences, including those who have impressive qualifications which they have used to give weight to their (very sadly wrong) opinion on such matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadows In particular, Professor Sir Roy Meadows, who gave his opinion to the court that two cot deaths in the same family was so statistically improbable it must be murder. Given the level of numeracy of judges, it is not usually a successful defence to attempt to point out serious errors in the prosecution's "expert" statistical evidence, even when they are egregious, but finally someone succeeded. Several wrongly convicted parents have now been released.

It is also the case that quite a large number of university mathematics professors fail to understand the Monty Hall problem, another situation that involves some moderate sophistication in the understanding of probability.

As it happens, Phelps is Cancer, and Spitz is Aquarius.