Bayes offers a 'new' way to make sense of numbers.

After 15 years, environmental researcher Kenneth Reckhow can still feel the sting of rejection. As a young scientist appearing before an Environmental Protection Agency review panel, Reckhow was eager to discuss his idea for using an unorthodox statistical approach in a water-quality study. But before he could say a word, an influential member of the panel unleashed a rhetorical attack that stopped him cold. "As far as he was concerned, I was a Bayesian, and Bayesian statistics were worthless," recalls Reckhow, now at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "The idea was dead before I even got to speak."