Archive link here: https://archive.ph/mwFp9
Is the Royal Statistical Society debasing itself by pouring doubt on our judicial system, or is there something to it?
Archive link here: https://archive.ph/mwFp9
Is the Royal Statistical Society debasing itself by pouring doubt on our judicial system, or is there something to it?
This article doesn’t explain exactly why the statistical anomaly should be inadmissable in court. She was a common denominator in being on shift when a large number of infants died on the ward. From my understanding of the case too, various colleagues had been raising suspicions about her for several years; one consultant testified that he walked in on her standing over a baby that was in medical distress while only watching and not taking any actions to assist it. I think there were unexplained results in the autopsies too.
It seems reasonable to have the shift rota as one part of the case against her given that it was more like corroborating evidence instead of the centerpiece for the prosecution.
Were they asking for it to be inadmissible? My take was the RSS are implying the court allowed the jury to be misled as to its significance by not having a statistician on hand to explain it. It’s almost an exact replay of what happened in the Lucia De Berk case, later overturned and since described as “the greatest miscarriage of justice” in the Netherlands. Worth a read if you’re interested.
I think the subtext of it was that she could have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice if this one piece of evidence was invalidated. However from reading about the case it just seems like on piece of circumstantial evidence as opposed to the lynchpin for the case.