Lucy Letby case expert witness was under fitness to practise investigation

[ITMA2000]

Wow! Pot, kettle, black? Need a new investigation?
Lucy Letby case expert witness was under fitness to practise investigation during trial | Lucy Letby | The Guardian

What are the chances that they would have symptoms entirely consistent with insulin poisoning AND tests confirm this but both have other explanations? Astronomical odds I'd think.

The odds that some tests in some babies, in a dataset of many tests from many babies, are consistent with some form of inflicted harm are not astronomical. Between the many babies, the many tests, and the many ways one could theoretically inflict harm, there are numerous possibilities for results "consistent with" harm to arise innocently somewhere in the large dataset. The chance that some of many possibilities will arise is not small, even if the chance of every specific possibility is.

It's a lot more believable than 7 consultants got together to scapegoat a totally innocent nurse, got the police all on board, got supervillain Dewi Evans to claim it was murder and managed to get her sent down on a whole life order. All because the unit suddenly couldn't cope for a year and the doctors inexplicable forgot how to care for babies.

But speaking of defamation-I hope the "expert" who claimed a doctor punctured a babies liver and if it was him he "wouldn't be able to sleep at night" gets sued to oblivion for that accusation. And all under Shoo Lee's watch.

I'm not surprised someone reported the post. It's no shock to me that the people who think circumstantial evidence is irrelevant take everything completely literally.

Yes why would they get the police involved…doesnt make sense….inviting people in to examine what was going on if you were hiding something

yes that consultant looked really sus to me

They weren't hiding anything, they didn't know what was going on, so they flagged it. The police thought the doctors were flagging something, and the doctors thought the police were investigating something, and they all relied on professional respect for each other that there wouldn't be smoke without fire without anyone actually asking a mathematician if there was anything there.

@LuisCarol you can't seriously think a mathematician has any idea whether there were any murders or not.

How would you identify the significance of an increase in the number of deaths in comparable hospitals without using maths? This is literally the first thing that should have been done.

When a case is based on statistics - Letby was “always there” for deaths and collapses - a statistician would be able to identify whether her presence was really significant.

eta that I’m using the statistical meaning of “significant” here.

You're not wrong, but before that "is this a statistically significant number of events for a hospital like this" wasn't answered.

"hospital like this"

Yeah who needs detectives, just a mathematician to say "nothing to see here" will do! The case was built on the fact babies were dying suddenly with no natural progression to explain it. That's not the realm of expertise of any maths whiz. Stats barely even come into it. You can't explain away a serial killer by comparing the deaths to other hospitals.

Totally.

A statistician can’t rule out murder, of course, but can identify whether the pattens and prevalence of deaths and collapses are statistically significant.

In this case there has been the assumption that the cluster of deaths and collapses is significant in number and pattern without this having ever been determined.

Unsurprisingly, you’ve made no effort to understand why statistics are important in this case and have resorted once again to jeering.

To respond to your point, none of the deaths or collapses were deemed suspicious at the time, and there are other more plausible explanations than those put forward by the prosecution. It’s literally botched statistics that resulted in cases being retrospectively identified as murder or deliberate harm based on Letby’s presence.

Statistics were allegedly a huge issue in the validity of the case. See Royal Statistical Society statement:

https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2024/general-news/rss-statement-on-the-statistical-aspects-of-the-lu/

And the BMA:

www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s226.short

@EyeLevelStick well I could've sworn she had her own statistician for the defence. So her not calling them tells me two things-

1. the case wasn't built on statistics

and/or

2. the stats looked exceptionally bad for her

But I'm sure you'll say this was all the prosecutions fault somehow.

Did she have her own statistician? Who was that?

@EyeLevelStick apparently she did but I don't know if we know who it was. The prosecution didn't use one either so how can it be anything to do with stats?

What was the chart all about then?

The defence instructed Dr Marie Oldfield - https://rss.org.uk/consultants-directory/165/drmarieoldfield/

(So much for me deciding to sit this thread out..!)

But who believes that theory?
I don't think any of the regulars on here do.

I think what most believe is that they genuinely thought she did it so turned a blind eye to everything else, which is very different to intentionally deciding to pin it on someone they knew was innocent.

Yes, who actually thinks that? If it's some weirdo/troll on Reddit or whatever, by all means go and give them hell, but that is just not a view that gets traction on MN. Much more time is spent refuting it than expressing it. It's as absurd as the idea that Shoo Lee was on some kind of revenge mission, which apparently Firefly wasn't even serious about anyway.

I should have also added that I’m inclined to agree with @Firefly1987’s two assumptions (or/and) as to why the defence didn’t end up calling Dr Oldfield.

I can’t help wondering if the reason they didn’t make much of an issue of the staffing chart during the trial was because they already knew from Dr Oldfield’s analysis that getting into any proper statistical argument was likely to end up damaging rather than helping their client’s case.

I don't see how the defence could have dismantled the statistics without discussing the construction of the case, which Judge Goss didn't permit.

We know what they were also not in possession of full data on other collapses and deaths etc, partly because of what have been listed as disclosure failings and partly because when they did construct a first report after the trial (unpublished) they relied partly on FOI requests.

So the idea that they had done the homework and found it wouldn't help doesn't seem viable.

Oldfield looks to work more in risk analysis than in medical statistics, so it's possible she advised in that area. It's also possible that she advised Myers on his defence closing speech, which picked up on the more glaring problems with the chart and with the "covert" statistics arguments in the prosecution's very broad and selective claims about patterns.

Calling a statistician as witness when things haven't been couched in statistical terms is a double edged sword, since people who aren't keen on statistics are very hard to shake out of a "but it's common sense" mindset. But that is not to say that her advice wasn't incorporate in the defence strategy and statements.

The case was built on the fact babies were dying suddenly with no natural progression to explain it.

That's a common misapprehension.

The case was built on the fact that, after more babies died than the consultants thought reasonable, they started to describe them as dying suddenly with no natural professional to explain it in retrospect.

(Baby A certainly had a genuinely sudden death, but some deaths are both natural and sudden).

Richard Taylor made this claim based on reports by Svilina Dimitrova and (I think) Neil Aiton, members of the UK panel which Mark McDonald assembled.

Shoo Lee assembled and led a separate panel of international experts.

You seem determined to paint Shoo Lee as some kind of supervillain. I wonder why.

I am sure Dr Brearey could take action for defamation if he wanted to. Whether it would succeed is another question.

I think the most pertinent question around the needle aspiration is why it wasn't disclosed to the pathologist or coroner. If it was routine, appropriate and not related that could have been ironed out very early on. Instead it's added another layer of complication and muddied already rank waters even further.

Yes. Worth adding too that Taylor's account was that it was excessive ventilatory pressures that made this manoeuvre disastrous, and these wouldn't have been ordered by the same doctor.

It's not really a matter of pointing to named individuals as much as observing that the team doesn't seem to have been willing to face up to problems, as evidenced by the failure to include information about this procedure in the report for autopsy.