Lucy Letby: Have you changed your mind?

[Kittybythelighthouse]

The other thread has had a lot of really interesting discussion but we are running out of pages so here’s a new one for those who are interested in continuing the conversation.

Whether you’re sure she’s guilty, sure she isn’t, or are somewhere in between, I’m interested in hearing how your opinion has evolved (or hasn’t!) since you first heard about the case,

Please try to be respectful - this is a heated topic. Its a matter of huge public interest with a lot of strong opinions, but we are all adults and can disagree with each other in a respectful manner.

Old thread is here (the poll still has a few days left):
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5388914-lucy-letby-have-you-changed-your-mind?page=38&reply=146359313

@Firefly1987 this is so disappointing. You have no basis for the claim that I have “some sort of agenda”. I’ve been more than kind to you. Darkly insinuating (without even tagging me) that I’m “closer to the case than I let on…” is just pathetic. I have yet to see either you or your new friend bring a single thing to this debate that isn’t just wrong, objectively.

Disparaging your opponent and attempting to smear them when you can’t win an argument honestly is very Trumpian.

If you’re going to criticise me then please do so by bringing facts and evidence and tagging me in. Otherwise don’t mention me at all.

When I first got interested in this case (hadn’t yet come to a conclusion but was hoping justice had been done) that’s one of the things that really made me smell a rat. One side was measured, calm, resourceful, principled, and had facts/evidence.

The other side was just using smears (“defending a baby killer!”) and bully tactics. Those kind of people are just recruiting for the opposite side 🤷‍♀️

Some will always choose to be wilfully ignorant and irrational.

I for one have no patience left for it, nor the appeals to emotion implying it’s somehow monstrous to dare to challenge and question.

Poor Dewi Evans my arse.

There shouldn’t be ‘sides’ here. It is one of the issues with our justice system. The French system is much more a search for truth.

To be honest, I am surprised we are all allowed to speculate on what seems to me to be an ongoing investigation. Maybe it is because the arguments are about the interpretation of the facts, maybe because it is not currently actively within the court system.

It is indeed a very curious case and, as with all of these type of complex cases, you will see experts disagree.

I would actually love to see a retrial where all the new experts could present the new interpretations to a jury.

However, evidence does include character and oral evidence. The attempts to discount psychological profiling and oral testimony, as if this were not evidence, is wrong. Whether an accused seems consistent and truthful will always be a part of any legal case, especially with no ‘smoking gun’.

Also, I am sympathetic with the idea that process should never trump justice. But, equally, you have to have process. Otherwise, especially in this day and age, a verdict will carry little weight if it can always be endlessly appealed. It will end up as a very weighted system if those who are either rich or sympathetic characters (so can raise money via go fund me etc) will get superior justice. It will also end up being racist by default.

@Londonmummy66 thank you for your kind reply and for sharing - I'm sorry to hear about what you went through. I think self blame comes with the territory of being a mother- and being a woman, too. At least for many of us. It's a lot to carry. Hope your DD is doing ok x

This is exactly what annoys me about those discussions. I really dont have a lot of patience with folk who constantly put down others with accusations of ignorance and being irrational.

Rational discussion backed up with evidence is always welcome.

40x more tube dislodgements on her shifts.

@Firefly1987 _ find it amusing that you ignore @Kittybythelighthouse when she gave a clear and excellent debunking of the fallacy of the stats on tube dislodgement but then say you want the idiot bloke to hang around because he is the only expert statistician around. Is it because he is a man and stats are beyond out lady brains. If you had actually read any of the posts on stats -even those by the guy you so fawn over- you'd know that the 40% is an absolute farce of a figure as the baseline is understated for LL by a factor which is probably about 10. So 4% - which is around the norm - not 1%. Also there has been a suggestion - can't remember by whom - that the 1% was actually the Liverpool target rather than the actual figure.

How condescending.

It isn’t condescending! Those supporting a review of the conviction have reasonable concerns backed up with evidence. You might not agree with their position but they can give a rational explanation for it. Those who are determinedly pro verdict are apparently unable or unwilling to articulate their reasoning for discounting what has come to light regarding the medical evidence and legal process. It’s all emotion, deliberate misrepresentation and obfuscation regarding new information, smear campaigns and ad hominem attacks.

Not so sure we can be particularly confident that Jane Hutton has a good handle on the issues as she has already had to issue a correction to her ‘strongly worded letter’ as she made a mistake in her original calculations.

A person made a mistake, notice cess it and corrected it?

I said she was an expert in her field, not God.

I certainly feel more confident in someone that promptly acknowledges and rectifies an error than someone that refuses to acknowledge there could possibly be anything wrong with their input despite the glaring flaws being pointed out multiple times from multiple sources. One shows integrity. The other shows dogmatism.

She didn’t notice, it had to be pointed out to her.

It speaks volumes that you believe the requirement for evidenced based discussion and rationality is condescending.

Whereupon she was able to assess it, accurately, as an error - probably based on assumed length of shift - correct it, and acknowledge the problem.

If only Evans took a similarly rational approach.

Newbutoldfather · Today 10:46

However, evidence does include character and oral evidence. The attempts to discount psychological profiling and oral testimony, as if this were not evidence, is wrong. Whether an accused seems consistent and truthful will always be a part of any legal case, especially with no ‘smoking gun’.

But what we generally have on here isn't psychological profiling it is posters either saying 'I wouldn't act like that'.
Or she 'She is emotionless'.

When the first is something that you don't know unless you have been there. and the second is their opinion of someone that is doped up on medication and not how the person would normally act.

Yes.

that’s correct.

and your point is….what, exactly?

That the public should just ignore every expert or person proficient in a certain subject or occupation because they cannot possibly be experts or proficient because every single one have them will have made errors in their careers?

im sure plenty of other statisticians will be weighing in on the issue of Panorama presenting ‘facts’ that aren’t actually facts - should we ignore them too, because I can promise you they will all have made errors in their workings during their careers.

You said it better than I did.

The Panorama programme used non-standard units of "ventilation shifts" where a shift is 12 hours (presumably so they could equate it to the number of shifts done by LL). The standard unit quoted is "ventilation days" where a day counts as 24 hours. So the "expected" value per shift is 1.98/200 rather than 1.98/100.

The panorama maths is still wrong. They said if there are 10 ventilated babies for 10 shifts then you multiply those to get 100 ventilated shifts.

They also said that LL worked 50 shifts in total in 2012 and 2015 but they didn't multiply those shifts by the number of babies (if we're going with average of 10 - not unlikely for the size of hospital - then that's 500 ventilated shifts). Their figures were 20/50 = 40% rather than 20/500 = 4% so a whole order of magnitude out.

You could still argue that 4% is bigger than 1%, but then these are approximate figures taken over a relatively short period of time and are only concerned with whether LL was on shift when the incidents happened, not whether she was treating them.

If they're genuinely arguing a 40 fold increase in events and that these were caused by LL then how was it not noticed at the time when she was a supervised trainee?

Well done to those who pointed it out to her, which of course is the correct thing to do. She then amended the mistake. People are human and the essence of humanity is to make mistakes and then acknowledge and amend it. It's how we evolve.

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in her competence though (a bit like when she criticised the CoA judgment but it then became clear that she hadn’t even read it). It was clearly a very basic error as so many people were immediately able to point it out.

And why even bring Dewi Evans into it when all these new experts are supposed to be the premier league to his pub 5-a-side?

Yes, and the difference is that she corrected it. Moritz and Coffey, on the other hand, didn’t even run their “stats” by an A Level maths student, let alone a statistician, despite having many months to do so.

"If they're genuinely arguing a 40 fold increase in events and that these were caused by LL then how was it not noticed at the time when she was a supervised trainee?"

Exactly right. @CheeseNPickle3 Trainees are supervised closely and if the same mistake is being made repeatedly, then immediate action should be taken.

“It was clearly a very basic error as so many people were immediately able to point it out.”

Yes, how embarrassing for Moritz and Coffey.

You did mean Moritz and Coffey, right?