JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Biometrika Trust is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Biometrika. SUMMARY Allocation problems can involve elements whose original population is not conclusively indicated by the observation. These elements are called 'cases of doubt'. In this paper a decision-theoretical model for allocation problems admitting cases of doubt is developed. The sampling situation is discussed both from a distribution-free point of view and for multinormal distributions. The theory is illustrated with an example from medical differential diagnosis.