Special Edition: The Lucy Letby New Yorker Article
The NHS laid the blame at the feet of an enthusiastic nurse. Who is going to fix it?
In lieu of a post this week, I am posting a photographed version of the Lucy Letby New Yorker article, which I read last night, sandwiched between old man John McPhee snoozy musings and a profile of Miranda July, hero of the inner weirdos in all of us. Thanks to Max, a reader, for finding this online version for all of us.
Interesting to read this week's edition of The Economist. (24/08/24) The "Britain" section is led by a rather acerbic piece on the so-called statistical evidence in the Letby case, a classic case of painting the target round the arrow. Very senior academic statisticians are now openly saying that Letby's conviction is unsafe. The UK courts are going to have to do some serious work on training Judges in how to understand Statistical and Probabalistic evidence. Arguably such evidence has no place in a criminal trial as it can only ever indicate a probabilty that someone has done something, and criminal trials require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" it is civil law that is decided "on the balance of probability". I give it no more than two years from now, and I think we'll be listening to those who pilloried Letby wriggling under cross-examination in a public enquiry.
If you drop a url into archive.ph you’ll get a free version of almost anything. (But not Substack pieces.)