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

It is on the Netflix doc post - loads of it - even oftenaddled made a long post about scapegoating

right in off to MC 🧑‍🍳

What they did was to bring unresolved questions to the police, unfortunately with a biased data sample.

It is the police who then failed to undertake either a full statistical analysis or a multidisciplinary medical investigation.

The consultants never claimed to have answers to their questions, so I am happy to accept that they had cause to ask questions but that doesn't mean I'd accept the answer they suggested (and, not entirely unreasonably, asked the police to investigate).

In fairness, you don't appear to actually know much about the law of defamation.

Let's set aside practicalities and expense and pretend both Dr Lee and Dr Brearey are interested in pursuing defamation claims. Let's also say someone made the revenge mission claim seriously. Truth and honest opinion are both defences in English law. This means anyone who does bring a claim needs to be prepared for the possibility that the other side will try and argue either.

In Dr Brearey's case, however he feels about the criticism of him (and one possibility is that he secretly concurs or at least suspects...) he'd still have to be ready for Dr Taylor to use the medical notes and his expertise to argue that he did lacerate Baby O's liver. Or that it's fair comment to think he did. That means all of his actions being highly publicised, picked over, in what would no doubt be a media circus. It's a huge risk to take unless you're 101% sure that not only are you fully in the right, but there's also nothing misleading in the notes that might make it seem like you're not.

Whereas Shoo Lee doesn't need to have the same level of concern about the claim that he was on a revenge mission, because it's so obviously stupid. He's much less likely to be embarrassed or have to worry about professional body sanctions because someone tried to defend that claim in court.

Covering themselves is usually what people accuse them of when they talk about scapegoating!

You are saying a lot about what they "would have" done, but you're not referring to the records of what they actually said or did. There are lots out there.

I usually avoid the word scapegoating in this case because some people take that to mean, intentional dishonesty in blaming a victim.

But it is used in both senses: dishonesty and also the effect of things like prejudice, confirmation bias and tunnel vision, which can lead to blaming someone wrongly.

If you want to argue with my past posts maybe copy and paste them please. But I've never supported the intentional scapegoating theory, on any thread.

Yes they looked at every other possibility first. It's silly for posters to claim they jumped straight to "serial killer nurse"! That's all they were left with after they eliminated every other possible explanation. I don't know why people insist they know more than the people that actually worked there and saw what was happening on a daily basis.

How (or whether) they eliminated every other possible explanation is the million dollar question. A great many experts have examined the medical notes and don't agree that they did so.

Please explain how they eliminated every other possible explanation.

Yes. People talk as if this would have been the first time Shoo Lee encountered a setback or dissent.

You don't get to be a senior researcher and an implementer of change in medical practice without plenty of experience in both. He'd be used to having his views challenged, and used to doing exactly what he did in response - going back and sifting the evidence and explaining where he is coming from.

People who present this as a "revenge mission" fired by anger or wounded vanity really must not understand much about his career path. It's like claiming a sportsman has to be on a revenge mission with wounded pride to win a match, or a prosecution lawyer must hate the defence lawyer and the defendant. These are just people doing what is normal in their sphere.

If you are seeing claims that Lee must be angry or upset to convene a multidisciplinary panel to examine medical records, @Firefly1987 , I don't think they can be coming from anyone who understands his job and his history. He's being generous with his time, but apart from the legal context, he's not doing anything he won't have done dozens of times before.

I find the fantasies about Shoo Lee, thwarted supervillain, absolutely the silliest aspect of online discourse on this case.

This Firefly person must be on the wind up surely

By looking at the medical records and circumstances around the deaths and collapses and ruling out natural causes.

I think I can do that - we are not experts in court - I can imagine how people would act - I’m responding to claims they just said it’s Lucy and told the police without thinking it through

I just love when people drop in with an insult and absolutely zero contribution to the thread. How can someone who supports the trial and sentencing be on a "wind up" anyway.

I think you are right to reject the idea that they just went straight to the police. They didn't. But that doesn't mean they were certain the only possible cause could be Lucy Letby either. They asked the police to investigate.

They didn't rule out natural causes death by death. They suggested - and this is where unfortunately they relied more on statistics than they could handle - that the fact that there had been so many deaths meant the deaths were less likely to be natural.

Well they were very likely to be - from 2-3 to 8 wasn’t it..

yes asked police to look into it

sounds fine to me

Who are you talking about here?

Murder was one possible explanation but obviously there could be others.

But yes, if the police had done things right at this point, I don't think it would have been a problem. For one thing, they shouldn't have involved the consultants in investigating and picking cases after this point (out of fairness to them as much as anything)

It's not about what side of a debate a person is on but what arguments they're using or the way they go on.

Agreed. I'm not seeing the issue. There were 3 collapses in less than a week! And one either side of her holidays. But nothing to see here...I'm sure there's all sorts of imaginary collapses whilst she was on holiday and on others shifts we just don't know about them 🙄

The hospital's own reviews showed there were well over 70 collapses a year - they didn't track or count them. So three in a week wouldn't be strange at all.

Yes, of course there were lots on other people's shifts, some of which we know about through police notes, prosecution chart errors, children's medical histories as reported at the trial, hospital records, Thirlwall documents. It's unlikely there were none while Lucy Letby was on holidays but we don't have data sufficient to demonstrate either way.

It's unlikely there were none while Lucy Letby was on holidays but we don't have data sufficient to demonstrate either way.

@Oftenaddled and even if there weren't any we'll just assume there was, of course. No deaths/collapses when the serial killer wasn't there just means they're hiding that info from us, clearly 🙄

You know if I was her mum or dad or anyone close to her who believed her innocent I would've found out all this info and be shouting it from the rooftops about all the suspicious sudden collapses that didn't involve my daughter.

Yes, of course there were lots on other people's shifts, some of which we know about through police notes, prosecution chart errors, children's medical histories as reported at the trial, hospital records, Thirlwall documents.

On other peoples shifts as in they were the designated nurse but Lucy Letby was also in the vicinity? Or when LL wasn't on shift at all?

Just the fact that none of us knows the answer to this demonstrates that the statistics - Lucy was “always there” - are shonky.

We've known for ages that there were other collapses considered suspicious until it turned out Lucy Letby wasn't on shift.

Dewi Evans has admitted it himself for baby C

Peter Elston has put out a new video on them just today

Both