Lucy Letby. Why do some people only read headlines?

[skyfirechesnut]

I was at work today and someone says so Lucy letby is innocent now. They have just gone with the media headlines. Instead of researching.

Sorry for the fail link but this is quite a good article below on the current state of things. The author has attended all trials and listened to appeals and conferences.

I also don't understand people who say she was scapegoated. If people follow the Thirwall enquiry this is far from the case. She was totally protected, her parents calling up, being in meetings, dictating apologies. It beggars belief.

I can somewhat understand people saying she is innocent based on medical evidence after the press conference but even that is nothing new.

You can't say my expert is better than yours.

Also people seem to think it was all Dewi Evans for the prosecution it wasn't. There was Dr Bohin, Prof Arthurs , Prof Hindnarsh and Dr Mar etc.

That is without the Doctor colleagues if you want to dispute them.

Then they new defence have changed ideas from the conference they had in December.

They are also not totally impartial.
It isn't as simple as the headlines.

Here is the article.

archive.ph/NYg7U

Oh no however will I cope knowing a bunch of closed minded, uneducated people are laughing at us, those who actually have a brain and can consider other evidence and expert opinion.

Ha! Yes, imagine how much mileage the prosecution would have got from the dark detail that “Letby constantly visited true crime gossip page ‘Tattle’, evidently obsessed with the salacious details of murder” dun dun DUNNNN

I think you are misunderstanding the part about LL being a NURSE and that there are RULES about not doing that sort of thing in her position. I agree reading a lot of true crime would be strange to some people but since I assume none of us are intending to become serial killers and finding ourselves in Lucy's position I think we'll be just fine. And we're not the ones trying to get her off-so I'd say that also goes in our favour.

Do you know any nurses? If so ask them if they've ever bought home any handover sheets by mistake and thought ah shit I'll shred that or take it back in to put in confidential waste.

I find the fact she took any medical notes home and kept them absolutely shocking, grossly unprofessional and yes fucking weird. I don't think the average nurse will have bags full of medical notes in their homes.

I do find her searching the families very odd but as you say she looked up everyone she met, that does provide context. But to me and the majority of people it is still weird as the majority of people just wouldn't do this.

As I said, trying to normalize these actions would never have swayed me of her innocence. To me and many people the behavior is just unusual, if it wasn't odd it wouldn't even have been presented as evidence.

The medical evidence has the potential to prove there were no murders, whilst I may be swayed on her guilt, I firmly believe what she did was absolutely weird.

Breaking the rules doesn’t make anyone a murderer, unless the rule being broken is…y’know, murder.

Of course none of you intend to find yourselves in LL’s position. That’s exactly why you argue so forcefully for obvious flaws in the justice system, policing, the NHS, and the media to go unchecked. This is where your logic vanishes - allowing such flaws to not only go unchecked, but to become cemented, will lead to more miscarriages of justice. One of them could be you. It could be any of us. On a population scale it will be one of us. It will lead to more babies dying in the NHS too. This is why it needs to be examined and held up to sober scrutiny, even if she is guilty.

But apparently you lot value having the latest grisly murder story to pore over than you do your own rights. Weird take but you do you. The adults will still be discussing matters that affect us and that we are entitled to discuss whether or not you and your little gossip site friends like it 🙂

To all of the people who think she's innocent, would you let her look after your baby? Be truthful.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're saying here.

I'm just basing the above on my own work experiences. We often wonder about past patients. Certainly, some staff members check online social media accounts. Others will personally know some of the parents and be connected to them on social media.
Parents will often visit the NICU on significant dates, such as birthdays/anniversaries, which leads to the conversation of "oh, guess who visited today?" And then the Facebook search when you've been reminded of them.

So, although it might seem bizarre or weird to many, I can see how it would happen.

Keeping notes could be something or nothing. My own notes wouldn't necessarily have any identifying details on them.
Have any of these handover records been made public? In court for example

That's nice, at the end of the day they'll be on the right side of history, your lot wont.

I personally think a NICU nurse searching parents of babies they have cared for would be a relatively normal thing to do. They care for these babies often from the day they are born for weeks or months. Why wouldn't they care about how the families are doing?

This again 🙄 You’re really struggling to understand that other people view this case in a macro way, on a societal level, without being focused on Letby herself as an individual, aren’t you? It’s because you yourself clearly struggle to see how this has ricocheting effects far beyond Letby that have nothing to do with her personally. The whole thing is like a soap opera to you. Goodies and baddies. So childish.

That aside, for argument’s sake, let’s go with your question on the basis that you present it. My answer is that, first, I wouldn’t let anyone I don’t know look after my baby no matter how they are, including you.

If she fell into the category of people who I would allow to look after my baby (family and close friends) then of course I would, because the entire point in her being innocent would be that she didn’t do it.

The delusion! I’ve screenshotted this by the way. Hope you have an appetite, and the honesty, to eat your own words when the time comes.

No. But then again there's plenty of my own colleagues I also wouldn't want anywhere near my baby. And none of them have ever been convicted (rightly or wrongly) of murder.

Have you actually read or listened to any of the evidence or differing opinions that the deaths and collapses were caused by natural causes?
No. Because it doesn't fit your narrative.
There's no concrete evidence, all circumstantial and yet you still won't consider the possibility she may just well be innocent?

The delusion! I’ve screenshotted this by the way. Hope you have an appetite, and the honesty, to eat your own words when the time comes.

Likewise you @Kittybythelighthouse , once Shoo Lee and his panel realise they have been manipulated by Mark Macdonald and his client (and her PR firm) and that they weren't given all the information that they needed to properly form their opinions. I suspect they aren't going to appreciate being embarrassed by the court of appeal.

So your saying neonatologists, and other experts in their field were manipulated in to risking their credibility and reputation because Mark macdonald made them? Not they have also closely followed the trial, had doubts and then came forward, looked at the evidence which points to her being innocent?

You think clinicians with their expertise wouldn't notice gaps in the records?

You think case notes aren't numbered?

You think McDonald decided to sabotage his own campaign for ... what?

You think McDonald has cunningly planted fake scans and blood test results, or that he has somehow left gaps in the records that suggest these things exist?

This is a novel and imaginative theory. Maybe you could make a career as an expert witness.

Can you say a bit more about how you think the experts have been manipulated? And why you believe this? Have you personally read their opinions or are you basing yours on people like Christopher Snowdon? What do you think would motivate people of such impressive professional standing to put their reputation on the line? Do you not believe in their credibility and if not whose opinion do you respect and what makes you value them more highly?

This is full on tin foil hat territory. Dr Lee is not a stupid man. Neither are the 13 other world leading experts on his panel. They are busy, in demand, highly regarded, professional people. They didn’t spend all this time and energy conducting detailed reviews into these deaths and collapses, working pro bono over months, for no good reason. Unlike Evans they weren’t getting hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, in public money fees to take the time to do so. Unlike Evans they haven’t shown form for this level of corruption via extremely dodgy past behaviour. Unlike Evans they don’t have buckets of leisure time to go around findings lives to ruin, they are highly regarded and very in demand professionals. Interpreting the panel as anything but people with principles, both in their science specialism, and as human beings, standing up for what is right is willful ignorance worthy of a “the moon landings are fake!” swivel eyed zealot. You simply cannot honestly discount the panel’s findings out of hand.

At this point no one balanced and honest can possibly claim to have zero doubt. There’s no way this hasn’t shaken your belief to some extent. That doesn’t automatically mean taking the opposite view, but you cannot possibly feel totally secure in the verdicts unless you’re committed, like a religious zealot, to believing she’s 100% guilty regardless of the actual reality unfolding in front of us all. It’s astonishing to witness the increasingly complicated knots you are willing to tie yourself into, to continue believing it. Why are you so resistant to this? It’s wild.

You’re on, by the way @rubbishatballet let's check back in with each other down the road. If, by some astonishing turn of events, it’s shown that MacDonald has managed to do what you claim I’ll happily eat my words with a serving of humble pie on the side. I’ll only be slightly less astonished if you manage to do the same in the opposite circumstance.

P.s: judges in the court of appeal are not scientists and often do not have even an A level in science between them. Their judgesplaining to Dr Lee last time was not just wrong, it was hideously embarrassing for the UK judiciary. They are not going to attempt to do so again now that this level of public attention, worldwide, is on them. It’s remarkably naive that you think a judge has the authority or knowledge to change the reality of scientific truth just by saying so, with zero scientific grounding, But that’s beside the point.

I'm not sure there's much point in going round in circles with certain posters. What happened with this panel is absolutely unprecedented, to have people of that calibre just demolishing the basis of case like this. Of course it's not the last word, there is a process which hopefully will be expedited and their claims are as much up for scrutiny as those of the original prosecution. But it's obvious to anyone with a brain they are not some bunch of charlatans or anything other than the most qualified people you could find. So let's just see what happens. The low-grade insults from people who seem to think this is a murderer fan club just aren't worth engaging with.

You’re right of course. I am fascinated though by the extraordinary psychology at play here though,

Yes.

Given how the police and media dug into her life without managing to find anything more incriminating than a social media addiction and GDPR breaches, we know a good deal more about her than about the many people that did look after my children when they were at nursery.

I wouldn’t let them be treated in that hospital or by any of the doctors involved though.

@Kittybythelighthouse I do not believe Lee is a stupid man, nor are the experts on his panel. However, I also do not believe that the prosecution expert witnesses (including shock horror Dewi Evans!) are stupid people either. And I also do not believe that Ben Meyers is stupid, nor are other members of LL’s original defence team, and I think that there will be a very good reason why they chose the strategy that they did and that it wasn’t just that they miscalculated. I think it is a huge mistake to underestimate all these people, however hubris (and in relation to Evans in particular a degree of snobbery) seems to be driving some to do this. In this thread alone we have a number of armchair neonatologists (not to mention various other specialties) confidently making clinical arguments that I do not believe they are qualified to make, and blithely trashing the opinions of people who do actually have expertise and just perhaps might know things that we don’t. This is where the knots are getting tangled, not by those who are standing by the convictions until a proper process might determine they are unsafe.

I also think that Mark Macdonald is a self-publicist but not the greatest lawyer and is out of his depth here. I do not believe that he will necessarily have served the panel of experts as well as he might in the way that he ‘instructed’ (acknowledging they were acting pro bono) them. Yes I believe all the members of the panel are eminent experts in their fields but I do not believe they all came at this from a starting position of complete impartiality (eg Lee and Modi). However, I do accept (until I see anything to suggest the contrary) that the panel members are all acting in good faith, albeit whilst perhaps not fully appreciating the three ring media circus they were attaching themselves to. Nevertheless, some errors have already been highlighted from the press conference and/or their summary report (eg incorrect date of death for one of the babies) which suggest they either overlooked the detail or did not have the relevant information to start with.

So in summary, without proper test and challenge of what they are saying nor an opportunity yet for the original experts to respond to their criticism, I am not just going to accept what they say as some sort of slam dunk. And if that makes me a tin foil hat wearer (wtf?) then I guess so be it..

Definitely. I'd avoid it like the plague.

The report really doesn't seem to list babies' death dates. What am I missing? I wouldn't see this as more than a slip / typo if it was there.

I don't think there's any reason to think Evans isn't clever too. I think he got the result he wanted.

The difference is that Evans produced explanations that don't fit known medical science. Lee's experts haven't been accused of that by anyone. They have much more to lose than Evans if they invent anything. There's no reason to think McDonald wouldn't give them full access to the medical records.