Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

New thread for those following or wishing to comment - originally started by @kittybythelighthouse.

I have not changed my mind on whether LL is guilty or not. Not that my opinion is of any relevance.

Yes, I said it wasn’t the worst spike. I think Firefly thought I meant in the calendar year 2015. I meant in a 12 month period. Sherwood Forest was worse in 2014. It’s a side point anyway. The actual point (as I think has been well made by now by several here!) is that random clusters are to be expected and one hospital will of course be the worst performing one every year. We can’t go round looking for a Lucy Letby nurse to burn at the stake every year. I think we can all agree on that 🙈

Otherwise it all gets a bit like Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and we’ll be stoning a nurse to death by random selection every June.

It was actually twice per week. Astonishingly.

It’s supposed to be twice per day.

After the downgrade the doctors started doing twice per day ward rounds also.

That was an unbelievable error to make on prime time tv.

It’s still shocking that they left in the follow up line that this means “either she was spectacularly bad or she was acting maliciously” given the new figures (which still don’t mean anything/don’t have supporting data) are at worst a fallacy of small numbers. 4 extubations out of 11 shifts is certainly not anywhere near large enough a sample size to draw such a conclusion from!

I also take issue with Coffey’s mysterious “someone who understands this data” Why the coquettishness about WHO, or at least what expertise they have? (note: we know this “someone” definitely wasn’t a statistician)

“Do you have a source for that.”

Do you mean for the dates of the baby deaths? The dates of the baby deaths were well publicised. Here’s a link to Thirlwall which has all that info. thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/

I don’t think they went far enough: there was sewage and foul water flooding on the NNU and maternity unit on a weekly basis.

It should have been closed

I think the point being made was that actual evidence would be needed before locking someone up for life. The same standard would (thankfully) apply to you or I also. I don’t think @kkloo was saying that LL doesn’t fit their idea of a serial killer.

I’m fairly certain they do publish the raw data too but yes, it’s meaningless.

I have a feeling that’s what @firefly1987is doing though - looking at raw data.

“There were also 5.42 extended perinatal deaths - deaths within four weeks - for every 1,000 births, including stillbirths. The average for similar sized maternity units was 4.73 deaths per 1,000 births.
The rate declined in 2016 but was still among the highest in the group.”

What do you make of that part of the data you posted? LL didn’t pop across to the maternity unit to kill babies in utero, right? So how come there was a spike across the same period in maternity if LL was the cause of the spike in neonatal? Was that a coincidence? Or does Shoo Lee’s panel have a point by asking for obstetric records for the mothers?

Sorry I meant that they usually contextualise raw data with e.g comparator groups, trends, statistical interpretation etc. You’re probably right that Firefly was sharing raw data though.

We have been over all your comments & given alternative answers multiple times. She was in with the sickest babies because that was her job. These babies were very sick not stable if they were stable they would have not needed intensive care. Maybe just maybe the doctors were not very good at resuscitation that is what the expert panel actually said. The use of the air embolism paper was discredited by the person who wrote it that is why he headed the expert panel. I followed the trial I am not sure she had a fair trial, there is reasonable doubt. The use of statistics badly, they misrepresented the ‘evidence’ most of which is based on group of doctors gut feeling & hypothesis(I think they were just vindictive)

@Firefly1987

You know there's a thing called the internet, no one needs to have followed the trial at the time. It's all still available online to read and it's fairly clear that for many people who think the verdict is unsafe that they do in fact know exactly what was reported at the trial seeing as they are constantly referencing the problems with it and what was presented in trial.

Agree. There’s be less focus on her race/gender/looks I think. However, men do tend to be portrayed poorly as well… especially if they’re from an ethnic minority

“it's fairly clear that for many people who think the verdict is unsafe that they do in fact know exactly what was reported at the trial seeing as they are constantly referencing the problems with it and what was presented in trial.”

@kkloo exactly! It’s not like people just keep saying “oh no but she’s blonde she simply can’t have done it”.

In fact I’m seeing a lot more in depth knowledge of the trial and the evidence presented from the folks who have doubts than from the ‘we followed the trial’ folks whose entire argument appears to be bad vibes and misremembered tabloid tales!

There were deaths when Lucy wasn’t there but ruled as non murder because she wasn’t there. They only picked the deaths when she was on duty. If they had done an accurate list of all deaths on the unit & included everyone who had access to babies including doctors sure the chart would give a very different view of the data.

The new issue of Private Eye’s Letby series is online now. Here’s a snippet re the failure of any of the doctors to report any of these supposedly unexpected deaths to the coroner.

”Nicholas Rheinberg, former senior coroner for Cheshire, told the Thirlwall Inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) he was "horribly disappointed" that not a single consultant or manager had passed on suspicions of foul play for any of the babies Letby was later convicted of murdering.
Nor did doctors tell the coroner about highly unusual skin changes they observed which were later used to support the convictions of death by venous air embolism, based on the misinterpretation of a research paper by Professor Shoo Lee.
When consultant Dr Ravi Jayaram was asked in court why he hadn't reported these to the coroner, he argued that he hadn't yet found the paper linking skin changes to embolism, so he didn't realise the significance. Prof Lee has since published research to show you get no such skin changes with venous air embolism. The evidence used to convict Letby was wrong.”

All of the PE Letby articles are here. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

For anyone in need of an overview these articles are a great place to start.

And Jayaram failed to mention to anyone for a long long long time about him having caught LL red-handed….after he previously emails colleagues and says that LL had called him into the nursery for help.

Only one of two things has happened here:

they fitted her up
they’ve aided a killer though negligence

“Only one of two things has happened here”

Yes. The doctors are indefensible in this case no matter what your opinion is on whether or not she’s guilty. Their behaviour is arguably even worse if she is guilty.

I’d certainly have several problems with them sitting on knowledge of an active serial killer in the hospital for a year, and them doing nothing about it but emailing management, if my baby were harmed in that time.

Absolutely. I cannot fathom what the fuck Jayaram was thinking. This case really has thrown up a lot of things that are problems regardless of whether LL is guilty or not.

Smarter people than me know not to waste their time because she's where she belongs

That would be Dewi would it?

Anyone else stumbled across this? https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=868601591941844&id=100063760321848&set=a.516308123837861

”I’m not a hero. I was just doing my job”

I agree. He’s not a hero. Sitting on evidence of an active serial killer at work in your hospital while you play email ping pong with management for a year is not heroic.

Secondly, sitting on knowledge of “unexplained and unexpected” deaths for ~two years instead of telling the coroner is not “just doing your job” even if there wasn’t an active serial killer at work.

It seems that some are convinced of guilt and others not so much and it’s common for both to find articles to support their view so thought it might be interesting to put myself in the place of being on the jury and how I might view the evidence presented to me.

I thought I would look at just one of the methods of the attempted murders and keep an open mind and try to form an opinion of guilt from the evidence given. It seems the insulin poisoning is the most damning, so I have read further on this.

So we know that there was two cases with this method where there was very high levels of insulin verses c-peptide and we also know that these two babies were treated for Hypoglycemia. It was said that these levels could only have been from externally introduced insulin, so would appear at face value that SOMEONE had deliberately given these babies insulin.

However, we know that the test used to show the insulin levels is 98% accurate and I’m sure that I read that a control test around that time, and from the same lab that did the tests for COCH had the insulin level incorrectly over reported by 800%.

The chances of any given test being incorrect is 1 in 50 on a 98% accuracy rate. Also with the overestimation of insulin of 800% it is very plausible that such a high insulin level could have been reported incorrectly.

Based on that I wouldn’t have been able to find her guilty.

BUT

These two babies were also treated for hypoglycaemia, which can be caused by high insulin levels. A 1 in 50 chance of an incorrect test isn’t very high odds but what’s the odds when coupled with hypoglycaemia being present?

So a quick google shows that hypoglycaemia is VERY common in neonates and especially so with premature neonates.

Could I still find her guilty on a 1 in 50 chance of an incorrect test coupled with the two babies being treated for a very common condition? No.

Also if this was so obviously deliberate harm, why wasn’t it investigated at the time? Or was it more a case that the test was viewed as incorrect?

if I’ve missed or misinterpreted something then please feedback, I’m trying to keep an open mind.

Someone posted upstream that the consultants campaigned for the unit to be upgraded again ie to take more serious cases again once LL was no longer working there.

If correct... What would motivate the consultants to campaign to upgrade the unit again if they were so stretched they could only make ward rounds twice a week? And also no neonatal experts. And also previous savings meant nursing seniority & experience depleted.

Would investment in the hospital have followed? Would it be enough, and soon enough, to rectify all the building and staff issues that many reports highlighted as major issues impacting on patient care?

Just trying to understand the logic if that is true. I can understand an upgrade being foisted upon them by other struggling units, but I can't understand if they were actually volunteering when already struggling.

(sorry, not the point of the thread, but I think the mind set of the the consultants' & management is interesting. The trial of the 3 managers might be revealing. Hope it is not a complete whitewash)

What you have missed is that you are looking at the chance of that particular test being wrong and saying it is 1 in 50.

What the investigation did is look back over the whole time period that Lucy worked on the ward looking for unusual test results.

So the real probability you are looking for is of all the insulin tests (and any other tests for that matter as they would have used anything they could against her) carried out in the unit what are the chances of at least two of them being wrong?

If there were 100 tests the chances are 60%

This why the defense needed to call a statistician. And also why the defense are at a massive disadvantage as they probably can't even get access to data such as how many tests were carried out in total or how many others gave these same unusual readings and Lucy wasn't charged, because for example she was away.