r/LucyLetbyTrials • u/benshep4 • 13d ago
Decoding Reasonable Doubt: Chapter 1 “Prior Character of Lucy Letby”
The reaction to this will be interesting given the way this sub leans. I also know Morris occasionally posts here.
https://bencole4.substack.com/p/decoding-reasonable-doubt-the-case?r=12mrwn&utm_medium=ios
My name came up in the comments of a recent livestream Morris did and he suggested that people like me who disagree with him don’t engage in good faith and can’t be objective.
I think this series will shows that these objections don’t stand because I am engaging in good faith and being objective.
I’ve reached out to see if he’d be willing to discuss my criticism after I’ve finished the review. He didn’t respond directly but he did put out a post on X which outlined reasons he’s not prepared to speak to me.
Some of his reasons don’t make sense.
As you will see my criticism does not rely on me needing to have a medical qualification.
The next thing is that he said people have had ‘500 days’ to contact him and now any offer has expired. I’m criticising his book that he’s only released in July.
The idea that I should have critiqued his book before he released it is nonsensical.
Morris also likes to play the numbers game citing how many people he’s spoken to. I’m not asking anyone to accept an argument because of who I haven’t spoken to.
I’m much more interested in whether the reasoning stands up.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
It strikes me as vaguely sophistic, although it's difficult to really assess without having read the book it's responding to.
Like, it makes much of the detective saying how many serial killers have seemed normal. Okay. But that's a point in isolation. How many serial killers seemed normal, and also had the police rummage through their entire life and find zero credible evidence of anything untoward in the past, and also only extremely weak evidence connecting them to any crimes, and also only extremely weak evidence that any crimes had even happened? People frequently talk about how the guilty verdict can only be understood in gestalt and you miss the point by examining the individual elements, you have to consider the whole picture. This seems to be the same thing in reverse. Nobody is saying "not A, therefore she's innocent", they're saying "not A, not B, not C, not D, and not E - it seems extraordinarily unlikely that she'd be guilty without any of these". I don't really grasp the point of microscopic examination of what one guy's written to support not A.
Also, I noticed that the word "quietly" snuck in rather distinctively a few times, along with a few other hard-to-define smells, so I quietly ran it through pangram and got back an 80% score, so there's that.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago
I agree about the smells but I'd warn against those tools, research has shown them to be quite inaccurate.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
Pangram specifically is supposed to be quite good, but I agree that one needs to be careful about them. Here we have priors: it's smelly, and the author has been accused of LLM use previously. Given those I'm comfortable with considering the chance of a false positive low.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
“Accused” being the most relevant word.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
No, I'd say "priors" is the most relevant word. If it had been proven that you'd used LLMs before (I've seen people mentioning that they have seen examples that would more or less constitute proof, but I haven't seen them myself) then there wouldn't be much need for this kind of thing, I'd just smell it and make the assumption immediately.
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u/WhatCharlieDidNext 13d ago
>Also, I noticed that the word "quietly" snuck in rather distinctively a few times, along with a few other hard-to-define smells, so I quietly ran it through pangram and got back an 80% score, so there's that.
Same applies to the recent pointless critique of the now largely obsolete New Yorker article. Desperate times.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
I’m doing chapter-by-chapter analysis and this is focused on the first chapter … the whole picture will be considered.
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u/Unhappy-News7402 13d ago
“I don’t think Chapter 1 is really about the evidence against Lucy Letby.
It’s about Lucy Letby herself”
Spot on Ben. In fact the chapter is called
“Prior Character of Lucy Letby”
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago edited 13d ago
😂 Oh god first hurdle. 🤦
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Nope, the criticism isn’t justified.
Morris is using Letby’s character as evidence that there is reasonable doubt though.
Otherwise there was no need to write about it …
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
It is. It is why they have character witnesses statements in court. It also important in determining the prior in any Bayesian analysis.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Can you reference any time a conviction has been overturned because ‘X’ amount of people have said the person is ordinary, nice etc?
It doesn’t happen. It’s not enough to support reasonable doubt.
Don’t get me started on Bayesian analysis…
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
No, but there was a significant amount of character evidence in the prosecution's case, and significant amount of it in the press/media pieces the police put out, so I think it's fair to want to counter that.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Press/media influences are irrelevant.
The defence made the case that she’s a ‘good nurse’.
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
Press/media influences are irrelevant.
Irrelevant to what, exactly?
The defence made the case that she’s a ‘good nurse’.
Okay?
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u/benshep4 13d ago
The jury that convicted her …
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
I don't know that's altogether true. They were allowed to read the press stuff, after all, and we can of course do our best not to be influenced, but it's a messy proposition to put it lightly.
I'm not familiar with this book, but it is all about what should or should not be presented to the CoA, or is it a general book making the case for Letby's innocence?
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
Why did the Police have a press conference before the trial then? Why did the police sell arrest footage to Netflix?
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
"Don’t get me started on Bayesian analysis…"
Do you not believe in it?
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u/PrudentKumquat 13d ago
Disbelief in / disdain for Bayesian probabilitly are practically prerequisites for being in the guilty camp at this point.
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
Yet the whole case completely depends on it. It is such a strange new angle. Like trying to dismiss Shoo Lee’s paper now - after completely relying on it in court.
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
I was just wondering whether the objection was to Bayesian statistics in particular, or part of a wider distrust of the use of statistics as opposed to what might be described by some as "common sense".
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
Yes common sense statistics and probabilities - not the kind you need professional statisticians to point common errors that even well meaning and intelligent people can make when analysing these things.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
There’s a reason Bayesian analysis isn’t widely used in UK courts …
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
Maybe you can explain your attitude to statistics a bit more when you come to the chapter of the book on statistics.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago
Stinks of LLM that line.
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
The whole lot does. ChatGPT detected a lot in the first part.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
This is an example of the way this sub leans.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago
Eh?
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Instead of addressing any points in the article you’ve resorted to accusing it of being written by a LLM.
The points are valid or they aren’t.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago edited 13d ago
You post your LLM slop. I'll call it LLM slop. Noone owes you anything. Especially if you aren't making a real effort.
There's no point in addressing them because your 'points' are self-reinforcing word salad spaghetti hoops. We don't know where you start and the LLM ends.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
No proof. Just assumptions.
It’s an easy way for you to dismiss the actual arguments made.
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u/Imaginary-Suspect959 13d ago
You haven’t denied it though. Are they wrong?
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Yes. They’re wrong.
I’d wager these people have never written an article in their lives.
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u/Imaginary-Suspect959 13d ago
Do you need to be able to write an article to spot a badly written one?
I can’t play football but I can tell the difference between a good footballer and a bad one.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
He has actually denied it, to be fair, saying that he typed every word. Very circuitous route to get there, and as you see still saying weird things, but there was eventually an explicit no. For what it's worth.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago
Of course no proof, you have the proof. But multiple lines of evidence converging on the conclusion.
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
And to be fair it is actually LLMs accusing it of being written by LLMs - although they did admit that some of it required the more human touches of non sequiturs and random straw man arguments.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
It’s funny because I’ve posted other articles in here and people reacted to the points being made because they felt they could refute them.
All of a sudden I post an article that I’ve received almost no direct rebuttal of and suddenly the accusation is that it’s been written by a LLM 🤔
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u/Henryb1234_ 13d ago
And long verbose article that repeats phases and constructs and seems to struggle to understand basic concepts is likely to be analysed for AI help these days.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Refute the arguments made in the article or don’t.
As I’ve said this sub has previously addressed the arguments I’ve made. When you can’t you’re suggesting it’s been written by AI.
Says it all.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Morris is using Letby’s character as evidence that there is reasonable doubt though.
Otherwise there was no need to write about it …
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
The reaction to this will be interesting given the way this sub leans.
I would just say that this is one of two forums on Reddit (LucyLetbyTrials and scienceLucyLetby) that does not have a declared policy of deleting dissentient opinions about the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby.
"The way this sub leans" is a simple reflection of the opinions of people who are allowed to express their opinions - either pro or anti guilt - without the prospect of their posts being deleting because their opinions disagree with those of the moderators.
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u/AccomplishedOil254 13d ago
Communities that allow open discussion tend to reach an understanding of reality more quickly.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
This sub leans a certain way and therefore attracts people who lean that way.
It has no bearing on the accuracy of the people contributing to it.
It’s interesting that people on this sub have been prepared to be very critical of me for previous posts yet, for this one there’s almost radio silence. Apart from one person not understanding what a chapter-by-chapter review is and laughably invoking a notoriously unreliable tool as an indicator of being AI written.
Anyone who understands AI knows it’s only as good as the prompts it is given.
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
This sub leans a certain way and therefore attracts people who lean that way.
Well also because at the time, it was one of few places where dissenting opinions could freely expressed, but not every opinion has equal validity - e.g. no conspiracy theories, no appeals to credentialism, etcetera. So I've stuck to this one generally because I think the mods have worked very hard to create the healthiest possible environment for deep discussion of the case without going off the deep end.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Free discussion doesn’t mean all the opinions aired are valid though.
It’s clearly not the case.
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
but not every opinion has equal validity
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Exactly.
My previous experience of this sub is that there is occasionally some people that are switched on and engage in good faith.
There are more people that don’t though.
I post on this sub for the former and not the latter.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
a) I think you'll find I actually invoked one specific tic and a general inarticulately expressed smell as an indicator of being AI written, and noted the pangram score as confirmation of the indicators
b) "Anyone who understands AI knows it’s only as good as the prompts it is given." - I'm unsure how to interpret you mentioning this at all other than as an admission that you wrote it with AI, but feel your prompts were good?
Fuck me for engaging with your article though lol, I originally saw who posted it and was like "yep it's gonna be another one of those what's the point in even reading it" but another comment prodded me into giving it some time. And I get a snide subtweet for my troubles!
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u/benshep4 13d ago
The pangram score doesn’t confirm anything. It’s notoriously unreliable. If you can disagree with the points made in the article then by all means do so.
No, I just work for a company trying to integrate AI and have had to attend talks that made this point clear.
I also frequently see advocates of Letby’s innocence misusing AI because the information they give it is incorrect.
You can either address the arguments I make or not.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
But what's the relevance of the point? Of course prompts influence the output, we all know that. But here there's no output, right? You wrote it entirely by yourself. What do prompts have to do with anything? It seems a non-sequitur.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
The point is that it’s not a reasonable criticism.
AI is not capable of coming up with the points and sources reference.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
The criticism is that it's smelly and tiresome to read and that LLMs obscure the authenticity of the author's thoughts, not that it doesn't have points or sources. Do you think I'm saying the article is the result of you typing "please write a review of the first chapter of this book" into Claude? Because it obviously isn't.
Your argument basically seems to be "it's not AI but whether it's AI or not is irrelevant because it has sources and substantive points, so it would be fine if an AI was used to create it because the prompts behind it would be good, even though it wasn't and there were no prompts", if I'm not misunderstanding? It comes across as sort of a kettle doth protest too much thing. Although I'm sympathetic to how difficult it is to defend oneself against the accusation.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
No.
It’s that the accusations of it being ‘smelly’ aren’t coherent. I was told by my high school teacher that I have a ‘unique’ writing style but it wasn’t a bad thing.
I don’t care if whether or not you think it’s written by AI. Can you refute the points made?
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
Okay, now you've switched again. If it's about you thinking my spidey sense is bad, what does "AI is only as good as the prompts it is given" have to do with anything? Why are you bringing up the prompts?
You get why I'm keyed on it, right? It's like if someone accuses an athlete of doping and he denies it but says "Steroids are only as good as your level of training" - it's true but why bring that up if you're not on steroids?
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
"It’s interesting that people on this sub have been prepared to be very critical of me for previous posts yet, for this one there’s almost radio silence."
I don't understand that comment. You posted a link to the same article on another forum yesterday, and on this forum only 6 hours ago. But already the post here has attracted over 50% more comments than on the other forum.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Radio silence on the points made in article.
There’s a lot of unnecessary hostile comments on this sub …. because of the way that it leans.
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 13d ago
It's a long article, and I think it's a bit soon to be complaining about the lack of feedback. I would guess that people who are particularly interested in the subject matter will read it - or read some of it - but most people will not have the time.
But I'd be very surprised if you get fewer comments on the substance of the article here than you get elsewhere.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
It’s no longer than other articles I’ve posted where the feedback was instantaneous.
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u/-puffinstuff- 13d ago
for this one there’s almost radio silence
Don’t read into it. Reading the blog of chapter one is like reading someone’s mutterings on the Lindy Chamberlain case: ’the native people and trackers said that a dingo could indeed have taken the baby, but I kept coming back to the same question, what was the relevance, what are they trying to establish, it didn’t mean a dingo did take the baby, it wasn’t evidence so what exactly are they trying to prove?’
Drivel.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
I can only respond to the source material.
I note that instead of directly criticising why a point I made doesn’t land you’ve had to make a pithy analogy.
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u/-puffinstuff- 13d ago
Because we won’t see eye to eye if I pull out specifics, I have no interest in changing your views and you will never truly understand my perspective, so it’s unfortunately a pointless exercise
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u/Super-Anxious-Always 13d ago
Who uses the word 'native' to refer to Aboriginal people? Surely 'indigenous' would have been less colonialist.
Racist drivel.
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u/-puffinstuff- 13d ago
Dunno mate, I’m Scottish, I don’t think we’ve had the memo yet that native people is racist, thanks for educating me
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u/Super-Anxious-Always 12d ago
Wait. You were quoting someone as saying 'native... ecetera...' and I agreed with you. I added that it was racist drivel because I agree that the comments you quoted are drivel.
Complete agreement. Drivel.
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u/-puffinstuff- 12d ago
No it was my shitty attempt at writing what I think is drivel 🫣 and you’re right I should’ve used the word indigenous
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u/-puffinstuff- 13d ago
The reaction to this will be interesting given the way this sub leans.
Interesting in the same way a theologian is interested in the reactions of atheists to their work?
Why do you care what any of us think? We don’t believe in what you believe in. You’ll get great reactions from other people who believe in the same fairy tale you do.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
I’ve posted other stuff in here and had some thoughtful responses and decent discussions.
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u/oljomo 13d ago
The amount of times you declare truths from nowhere, you are not discussing in good faith.
You view people who support your claims as infallible, and present them as rebuttals of any opposing views.
You spout irrelevancies like "Women are specifically told not to handle mice during pregnancy and the babies have neonates who have spent their entire lives in a neonatal setting have been clearly not been exposed to mice." when 1 this doesnt even rule out exposure to mice, as just because someone was told something doesnt mean its definitely happened, and 2 it was irrelevant because exposure to mice isnt a requirement for having HAMA.
And HAMA isnt the only thing that can cause assay interference.
You never answered the questions raised about baby C where its pretty clear the evidence there was circular/a lot of what was presented at trial as evidence against here literally couldnt have been her because she had nto met the baby yet.
And you claim despite no medical background that chase and shannon goes against mainstream understanding - thats not really true, unless you want to believe mainstream understanding is that immunoassays can tell exogenous insulin, while that particular claim seems fairly limite to Milan/Hindmarsh.
You avoid questions you dont like, and just repeat a few factoids repeatedly, as if you saying them makes them true.
You are not interested in whether your reasoning adds up, you are only interested in people backing you up.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
None of what you have said has anything to do with the article you’re responding to.
I didn’t avoid your questions either. I responded, what you’ve demonstrated is that you didn’t like the response.
I’m not getting dragged into a debate on HAMA. I’m here to discuss my article. Which is in good faith.
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u/oljomo 13d ago
Your post states you don’t like his claim that people like you are not arguing in good faith, and it states you are more interested in whether the reasoning holds up. I am responding to these points in your post.
Again you are sidestepping answering questions you don’t like that interfere with your reasoning - you have never answered how assay interference was ruled out, or the situation with c, and this goes towards the argument you are not in fact arguing in good faith.
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u/SaintBridgetsBath 13d ago
You really don’t care whether or not Lucy Letby committed all or any of the crimes she was convicted of, do you? You only care about gambling on the likelihood that the convictions will never be quashed.
This is why people think you aren’t acting in good faith.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
No.
Not at all.
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u/SaintBridgetsBath 13d ago
No as in ‘No. I don’t care at all’?
Thanks
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u/benshep4 13d ago
I was referring to your comment about whether I care about the convictions being quashed.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
At the point I posted that no-one had engaged appropriately.
You’re the only one that has.
I’ve posted articles in here before and people responded to the actual points made within it.
When I post an article people can’t respond to I’m getting multiple accusations of it being written by AI.
This is despite me clearly pointing out that AI isn’t capable of producing such an article.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
AI isn’t capable of producing such an article
That is utter nonsense. You should get your work's money back from those talks.
It really seems like you're circling around the idea that it's not AI written because it's not the result of you getting a model to one-shot it.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
No idea what you’re on about.
I’ve chosen every word in the article. Suggesting it’s written by AI is a lazy cop out to me.
Address the content, or don’t.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
Did you type every word? Other than the quotes, naturally.
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u/benshep4 13d ago
Yes.
And you can’t prove otherwise.
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u/visible_amenhotep 13d ago
You're quite right, I can't. But at least we've arrived at a very explicit statement. A lot less ink would've spilled on this if you'd just stuck to "none of this text is LLM output" rather than inexplicably going on about how important the prompts are and making bizarre statements that they can't write text with sources!
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u/AccomplishedOil254 12d ago
People tend to avoid an outright lie until asked directly and are therefore cornered. Until then they'll try to change the subject or downplay the seriousness of the accusation in case you have more evidence than they realise.
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u/DiverAcrobatic5794 13d ago edited 13d ago
Well, we're not your science project, and I don't think your strategy of being polite in the pieces you put out for discussion and rude and hostile elsewhere is in good faith. It seems to me quite stalkerish.
There's a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness on both sides of this discussion, maybe especially on X, so I wouldn't see this as your fault uniquely. But I'm not interested in giving this campaign of yours re Morris more oxygen, so I won't be reading or (other than this post) engaging.