The original version of the LITTERS example exhibits extremely poor mixing. This version uses a different parameterization in terms of the mean mu and a parameter theta that is, approximately, the shrinkage (It is only equal to the shrinkage when the litter sizes are all equal). A uniform prior is given to both theta and mu. The uniform shrinkage prior has been suggested as a reference prior in GLMMs by Natarajan, J and Kass, RE. Reference Bayesian methods for generalized linear mixed models, JASA, vol 95, 227-237 (2000). The approximate uniform shrinkage prior is quite revealing in this example. The posterior of theta[2] is not very different from its prior, indicating that there is very little information in the data about this parameter.