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

I think the bottom line for me is the scientific evidence has been debunked, even the correlation with Letby always being on duty has more holes than a swiss cheese, and there's nothing - nothing whatsoever - in her history or character that raises red flags. Everything else is just noise IMO.

Actually the police have sent a file of more evidence off to the CPS...we're currently awaiting the outcome of that (if any) but things like this take time. They said they were going to look at every single baby she ever had contact with. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are more charges. Which is why threads like this might be a little premature...

Exactly this. It has exposed so many booby traps and rot, from the NHS, to policing, to the judiciary, and even the bloody BBC apparently.

The thing that boils my piss the most about it is that we are called ‘baby killer defenders’ for drawing attention to it. Like it’s none of our business! Any one of us could be the next one to get caught in these various malfunctioning gears. Many people will if nothing is done about it.

We are expected to pay for public services that could ruin any of our lives but we aren’t allowed to point that out.

When the case is closed, this is how it will happen. File to CPS who will say right, enough taxpayers' money down the drain, no way this is going to stand up against a competent statistician / medic, and Operation Hummingbird will be no more.

We may have got there already, or we may not, but the fact that the CPS has the file tells us nothing.

Of course, if it's that non-story the BBC has just embarrassed itself with, the CPS presumably won't touch it with a bargepole now.

It's not premature to state that the scientific evidence has been debunked by experts of a far higher standard than Evans et al, and they found no evidence of any deliberate harm.

If they find strong evidence against Letby for these previous babies then we'll have a different conversation, won't we? I'm not holding my breath for that since the entire point of these threads has been how poor the evidence has been. That implies openness to new information in itself, rather than the dogmatism of some posters. It's not some kind of threat to my worldview if they come back with a lot of solid evidence and I change my mind 🤷‍♀️.

Hasn't their expert retired?
If so it will be interesting to see who they get to replace him, or if anyone is willing to take his place.

You'd think you'd want it thoroughly investigated if you thought it could exonerate her? Are you worried it won't? I can't think of a much more worthy case of taxpayers' money tbh. There are still most likely lots of parents who don't have answers. Apparently they're just supposed to shrug that off though. I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe on here. Yes yes police should never have bothered looking into the career of a convicted serial killer nurse! What a waste of time! FFS.

The ventilation statistics of 4/11 babies’ extubations when LL was in charge cannot be so airily dismissed as ‘the fallacy of small numbers’.

Based on the below paper, the odds of a baby estimating per shift are about 2.5%. The paper actually says that this is reducible using certain protocols.

https://www.scielo.br/j/jped/a/BpP7T3vyYmDXtJjWFkdR6Kx/?lang=en&format=pdf

If you assume that this is binomially distributed, then the odds of this happening 4 (or more) out of 11 times are about 3/10,000 (most A level maths students could confirm this).

Now of course, firstly, that does mean that it could genuinely have been one of those 3/10,000 random events. And, additionally, it doesn’t discount other factors could have caused it (same baby, length of ventilation etc).

But it is a statistic that says something and warrants further investigation. If I were a juror I would want to know how many other nurses had similar statistics, whether there were other factors at play etc, and what her later ventilated shifts looked like.

It is also interesting that those who want immediate apologies for others’ mistakes won’t apologise for accusing the BBC of conflating ventilated shifts with nursing shifts, which the BBC have categorically denied.

The standard of cases we got first time around suggests that it's not worth the investment of time and money to bring another set to court.

But of course you are right. A trial on any new charges might certainly exonerate Letby. It might well reveal more problems with the original convictions. So it might be a good thing. My reservations are mostly about how long it would take.

It's not premature to state that the scientific evidence has been debunked by experts of a far higher standard than Evans et al, and they found no evidence of any deliberate harm.

You could find an expert who would say anything if you scoured the globe long enough. None of their theories have even been tested in court. It'd actually be amazing to see how quickly they'd fall apart under cross examination. But in reality they're not people that even need to be entertained.

It's not some kind of threat to my worldview if they come back with a lot of solid evidence and I change my mind 🤷‍♀️.

Then why add to the public speculation which the parents in the case have already spoken about being upsetting? If she's guilty of far more than we already know then it's not a miscarriage of justice and the system worked as it should (a serial killer is sitting in jail with multiple WLO's-justice served) since so many posters seem to be worried about that. Can you put yourself in the parents' shoes for one minute and realise what it'd do to you the constant speculation that someone who harmed or killed your baby is innocent?!

I'm not sure how you can be so confident they won't have more on her. None of us know what the police have found. They didn't even know about the insulin evidence originally. And with 3 arrests that can't be anything else other than failing to stop a serial killer operating on the unit for months, it seems those in the know are very confident in her convictions.

If four extubations on a set of eleven shifts were enough to justify a court case, we'd have to devote the entire justice system to this phenomenon. I think this must be obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in statistics, even if they lack knowledge on neonatal matters.

The BBC clearly confused ventilated shifts with shifts in their presentation. Their saying they didn't is absurd when their explanation of the error is based on that exact confusion. Sheer idiocy, but they're just being petulant. It's of no interest how they themselves made an error: the essence of the error, and its correction, are what matters. Pity their correction has been so inadequate.

If you object to people posting about the case, you've only to stop contributing yourself to reduce the volume: so many posts on this thread are correcting your misconceptions.

Nobody needs to predict the future in order to discuss the current state of affairs.

You are just saying, if events prove you wrong, you'll be wrong. That's obvious but of no significance.

The police sending a file to the CPS isn’t evidence of guilt. That’s just procedure. It’s routine and most files sent to the CPS don’t result in charges. Investigating “every baby she ever had contact with” isn’t evidence-led, it’s a fishing exercise. That’s confirmation bias in action (again!). That’s just Cheshire Police trying to cover their 🍑

It’s funny that so far the most “damning” evidence we’ve seen from this is the fail at GCSE maths that Richard Baker dropped at Thirlwall and Panorama embarrassed themselves by repeating on tv with no statistical oversight (you could say that both moves were ‘premature’).

That said, whether new charges ever appear (and I bet they will not) has zero bearing on whether the convictions already secured stand up to scrutiny, which they do not. Using vague ‘maybe more charges’ talk to shut down debate is just gossip. It’s not an argument.

Even if these much ballyhooed “new charges” happened and even if they were somehow rock solid they would not make the extant evidence magically valid.

There is nothing “premature” about citizens in a democracy discussing a matter of tremendous importance to all of our lives. I feel like I’ve repeated that point ♾️ times in this thread already, but it never seems to sink in.

While it would suit many for critics of this case to shut up about it for as many years as it takes for the CPS to never bring charges, I’m afraid we aren’t going to shut up about it.

If you’re worried about anything being “premature” perhaps consider:

The doctors misunderstanding statistics and thinking that a death spike in line with a nationwide NICU death spike has to be a murderous nurse. Before they identified any actual murders.

Dewi Evans diagnosing murder (that everyone else missed) in “ten mins over a coffee”.

Cheshire police being taken in like dummies by a “suspicious” and inaccurate shift rota before doing a basic fupping statistical analysis. Then firing the first (and only) statistician they spoke to. Funny how rubbish stats is a constant theme in this case that “wasn’t about statistics”.

I could go on and on and on and on and on. But I don’t have all night.

He blows hot and cold on that.

He'd have to renew his GMC registration, I believe. This would mean the GMC would have to examine complaints raised against him.

You could find an expert who would say anything if you scoured the globe long enough. None of their theories have even been tested in court. It'd actually be amazing to see how quickly they'd fall apart under cross examination. But in reality they're not people that even need to be entertained.

They are not people who need to be entertained? Despite one being the person whose research Evans misapplied? Rather these people, who spoke out at their own expense, than a so-called expert who boasts he 'never loses' a case, even though expert testimony is not supposed to be biased to either prosecution or defense, and who volunteered himself and decided it was murder in 10 minutes over a cup of coffee. Oh, and who has a very lucrative career as an expert for hire.

Now I know you are a wind up merchant.

But in reality they're not people that even need to be entertained.

I'd be really interested to know who you're referring to and on what basis you say that.

There is surely no way they would be stupid enough to engage DE again. He’s been thoroughly disgraced. If they did though 👀 🍿

Good luck to them finding anyone else to step into his shoes! I don’t see that happening either.

People who don't want to let go of that BBC segment on the basis that it still represents a suspicious pattern of events are committing a well-known error in statistics, the fallacy of small numbers.

Predict the future? What about the present-you know, the one where in this reality she is the legal definition of a convicted serial killer?

You are just saying, if events prove you wrong, you'll be wrong. That's obvious but of no significance.

So naturally you'd say the same for anyone shouting about the innocence of any other convicted serial killer? Ted Bundy? Shipman? No?

Useful explanation of the fallacy of small numbers here: https://effectiviology.com/law-of-small-numbers/

This is why the BBC's already ropey statistic becomes meaningless once it's 4 out of 11. They should of course have removed that section.

They did quietly drop the part of their analysis where Jonathan Coffey said it "looked pretty damning". So they know too that they're presenting junk science, I suspect.

Based on the current state of knowledge? No, of course not.

It’s not 4/11 babies it’s 4 extubations over 11 shifts of 12 hours each. The number of babies we don’t know.

Nor was LL ever “in charge” at the LWH ICU. She was a trainee under supervision at all times. Only qualified ICU nurses would be in charge of babies on a one to one basis.

From Michelle Turner’s evidence to the Thirlwall:
^^
'Letby would have been allocated mentors to work with during her placement but would have worked with other senior nurses during her placement'

'Letby would have worked in a room with other nurses during her placement and while it is unlikely, there is a slim possibility that she would have been left in an intensive care room without another nurse present.'

'On this second placement, Letby would still not have been allocated a baby independently as a "designated nurse" and would have worked with a nurse who was employed by LWH and who had already completed the Qis qualification'

@Firefly1987 ”You could find an expert who would say anything if you scoured the globe long enough. None of their theories have even been tested in court. It'd actually be amazing to see how quickly they'd fall apart under cross examination. But in reality they're not people that even need to be entertained.”

Lee’s panel have expertise that has been tested in science over many decades. That is a much higher bar than a court full of lawyers and judges who are notoriously ignorant about science. They have centuries of combined experience at the highest level. Shoo Lee alone has written over 400 peer reviewed papers published in respected international journals.

Dewi Evans co-authored a grand total of ONE paper - in the 1970’s - which was published in an obscure journal.

One of the panel members is a senior Neonatologist at The Karolinska Institute. That’s objectively one of the best research hospitals in the world by anyone’s measure. It’s the home of the Nobel Prize for Medicine ffs.

You’re just exposing a lack of knowledge and/or research if you say the panel are “not people that even need to be entertained”.

Not to bang on about it, but fallacy of small numbers anyway. Even if you take every aspect of that garbled and unclear segment, ignore all the context you have helpfully and correctly provided, wilfully interpret everything to put Letby in the worst light, and ignore the fact that we are not dealing with independent variables, you don't do statistics with such an absurdly small sample size.

This isn't a luxury argument, or an advanced one, or a controversial one. It's very very basic stuff, which is why the BBC needs to take that segment down.

Good to see that the Telegraph has run a story on the BBC having to retract the worst of its data disaster.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/16/lucy-letby-lawyer-ofcom-complaint-bbc-panorama-liverpool/