During the Genetic Analysis Workshop 9 presentations [Goldin et al., 1995] a brief discussion took place about the value of empirical-Bayes methods in genetic analysis. Due to the informal nature of this discussion, the improvements available for analyzing data with this approach--and with the broader class of hierarchical models--were not clearly presented. As a methodologic contribution, I further explore how one can use this potentially valuable technique in analysis of genetic data, including data similar to those given in GAW10.