The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

Vixen said:
You seem incapable of understanding the point I was making, which was that an academic writing papers in an ivory tower (and in the case of your specific example, information gleaned third-hand from other parties) is absolutely useless in a criminal court of law as he wasn't cross examined and therefore his academic stuff could not be considered by the court. It certainly wasn't knocking academia. In future, make sure you quote me in context.
Click to expand...
No. First, that was your lame attempt at changing horses after it was pointed out to you that Peter Gill is one of the developers of the techniques used by forensic technicians, including those misused in the Knox case. Second, and more important, as has been pointed out to you ad nauseam, we are concerned, first and foremost, with the factual innocence of Knox and her ex-boyfriend. What the Italian courts ruled is of secondary importance at best.

I quote the excellent and succinct response of @Numbers here:
Numbers said:
Your bizarre comments suggest a need for some reference to the real world. Peter Gill was one of the inventors and developers, with Alec Jeffreys and Dave Werrett, of DNA profiling technology. Alec Jeffreys was the leader of those efforts at his lab at the University of Leicester. Jeffreys was knighted for these and other efforts in genetics in 1994. Gill also went on to further develop DNA profiling methods; he was the first to develop the methods to separate sperm DNA from epithelial DNA so that rapists could be identified by their DNA. He is also a pioneer in low template (low copy number) DNA profiling and the analysis of DNA mixtures. People such as Jeffreys and Gill were hardly isolated in an ivory tower; they developed the techniques used by DNA profile technicians, who are trained to follow procedures based upon those techniques.

So your stating that Gill is "sitting in his ivory tower pontificating" is an especially absurd statement. Gill knows DNA profiling; your posts do not show any significant understanding of DNA profiling. The technicians, such as Stefanoni, follow the procedures developed by the researchers such as Gill and many others.

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org

DNA profiling - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

Alec Jeffreys - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...

Your response to that was riddled with errors, misinterpretations, irrelevancies, and out-and-out lies that revealed your extreme bias and lack of commitment to the truth. I've hilited the more egregious ones. In the interest of not derailing this thread, I won't discuss them; anyone interested is free to link to the original post and follow the discussion from there.
Vixen said:
Be that as it may, Gill was not at the crime scene, he did not collect the samples and he was not present when they were analysed. Prof Torre, Italy's then leading geneticist was present as the expert witness on behalf of Sollecito, and also Patumi [_sp?] for the other testing. Gill did not see the raw data. All he had was the intellectually dishonest C&V report based in clear input from America and the Friends of Amanda Knox who misguidedly believed the case was a 'rail roading' by third world type rogue cops. In addition, Gill never appeared in court and was not cross-examined. His theory of possible contamination (for Sollecito only, not Guede), was purely hypothetical and untested. As Chieffi points out, the onus is on the claimant to specify which path the tertiary transfer of DNA is alleged to have taken place after a period of six weeks. Gill himself said secondary transfer was vanishingly unlikely after 24-hours. Yet here he is claiming it is possible after six weeks and not only secondary but tertiary...from a sterile latex glove. You know as well as I do that DNA doesn't transfer from one place to another like magic.
Click to expand...

So, no, Vixen, you haven't "weighed up the evidence" at all; you certainly gave no indication of any sort of reconsideration when your numerous errors and misinterpretations were pointed out to you.

So, I renew the question: How is it that the "German group of experts," and anyone else who supports your Estonia conspiracy theories, such as Anders Björkman, is allowed to criticize the JAIC report and is accepted as a competent expert, but anyone who criticizes the evidence against Amanda Knox is corrupt, incompetent, "a hired gun," "pontificating," etc.?
 
Vixen said:
The metric of m/s IMV is best because - and I made this point before but nobody understood it - wind doesn't move in a straight line, it tends to come in 'gusts', so metres per second is far more useful a measure in the short term for vessels because it can change a lot before one hour is even up.
Click to expand...

Anyhooooo, let's now talk about this post for a little while. Any comments, Vixen?
 
Vixen said:
The metric of m/s IMV is best because - and I made this point before but nobody understood it - wind doesn't move in a straight line, it tends to come in 'gusts', so metres per second is far more useful a measure in the short term for vessels because it can change a lot before one hour is even up.
Click to expand...
LondonJohn said:
Anyhooooo, let's now talk about this post for a little while. Any comments, Vixen?
Click to expand...
Hard to improve upon @JayUtah's discussion of it.

Furthermore, I agree with @Vixen that nobody understood her point. Including her.
 
Much of this toing-and-froing could have been avoided if you actuall posted in a clear and coherent manner.
It was poor punctuation in this post that cause all the confusion.
Vixen said:
What? I travelled from Stockholm to Turku, night boat, in the middle of January in recent years. It is not a problem for these boats.

The wind on 27.9.1994 was 24/25 m/s at its worse but otherwise a sou'westerly 18 m/s. 15 - 18 knots.
Click to expand...
You could have explained exactly what you meant by the 15-18kn, instead you just doubled down by quoting a whole bunch of unrelated "data".
And then complain when you're called out on this obfuscation.
As well as your propensity for unsourced quotes and citations. Which is as amusing as it is irritating, e.g.,
Vixen said:
You have said you have no respect for my citation skills, so you are welcome to research who was on the bridge for yourself, without my help.
Click to expand...
Here's a fine example of your citation "skills"
Vixen said:
EHocking said:
...
I know you can out Mensa Mensa and are a Chartered Accountant maven, ...
Click to expand...
... Given he slung a load of insults at me about being 'mensans of mensan' I assume he was determined to pretend he was confused rather than admit the other poster was wrong.
Click to expand...
You can't even accurately quote from this thread and you demand that others should admit they are wrong?
 
JayUtah said:
Irrelevant. You were asked for your source for the claim of 18 knots as in the range 15-18 knots. You said it was on the diagram.
Click to expand...
More than that, she said that it was on the diagram and therefore people should have known that when she posted, "The wind on 27.9.1994 was 24/25 m/s at its worse but otherwise a sou'westerly 18 m/s. 15 - 18 knots" the "15 - 18 knots" referred to the speed of the ship.
 


The previous modboxs had no effect so I'm putting this onto moderated status and might clear it out later

Please make some attempt at abiding by the membership agreement

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jimbob
 
Vixen said:
However, to your question 1b, the JAIC found as a measurable and observable fact that the bridge crew did not have the visibility range to see what was happening with the bow visor, so no, the bridge crew would not have noticed that the visor was open, or not.
Click to expand...
It wasn't necessarily to do with the range, more to do with the geometry of the bridge causing the bow to be insufficiently visible from the conning position (not the whole bridge), as the bridge was pretty close to the bow but in an elevated position. As far as anyone has been able to determine, the JAIC did not make any recommendation that the bridge should be moved closer to the bow. It certainly isn't in the recommendations in the report.
 
The broader point being made, however, was that 'Captain Esa Makela of Silja Europa said the storm was no different from any other September storm on that route' and that the conditions at the time of the Estonia disaster were 'not a problem for these boats'. It has been pointed out that the MS Estonia had been operating several times a week in seas she was not designed for and in which she was not certified to operate, resulting in (according to the accident investigation) cumulative fatigue of the bow visor locking mechanism and subsequent detachment, flooding, and so on.

So it is reasonable to ask @Vixen, what is your view on what led to the sinking, if it was a normal storm and 'not a problem for these boats'?
 
dorricc0 said:
The broader point being made, however, was that 'Captain Esa Makela of Silja Europa said the storm was no different from any other September storm on that route' and that the conditions at the time of the Estonia disaster were 'not a problem for these boats'. It has been pointed out that the MS Estonia had been operating several times a week in seas she was not designed for and in which she was not certified to operate, resulting in (according to the accident investigation) cumulative fatigue of the bow visor locking mechanism and subsequent detachment, flooding, and so on.

So it is reasonable to ask @Vixen, what is your view on what led to the sinking, if it was a normal storm and 'not a problem for these boats'?
Click to expand...

The JAIC stated that these were likely the worst storm bow-seas conditions MS Estonia had ever encountered, and that the extreme conditions were highly unusual for the Tallinn-Stockholm route. So this appears to contradict the notion that these were just "regular" bad-weather conditions:
  • The ESTONIA had experienced sea conditions of equivalent severity to those on the night of the accident only once or twice before on a voyage from Tallinn to Stockholm. The probability of the vessel encountering heavy bow seas in her earlier service had been very small. Thus, the failure occurred in what were most likely the worst wave load conditions she ever encountered.
 
SpitfireIX said:
So, Vixen, how did you determine that the "German group of experts" weren't biased in favor of the Estonia's builders?
Click to expand...
Whilst the German experts were hired, appointed or volunteered themselves for Meyer-Werft, shipbuilders, nonetheless they are still professionally bound by ethics. It can be argued they didn't want to shell out millions* of EUR/SEK to the huge number of orphaned children, widowed spouses, etc., together with the resultant damage to reputation, which can destroy a company, nonetheless, they can't just make things up, owing to professional standards, any more than I can make up profit and loss and balance sheet figures to save my employers from paying the tax they are obliged to pay under Tax Law. So, imagine you are in a car accident with another driver. You tell your insurers it's the other driver's fault, which he or she disputes, so yours and the other party's insurers hire an independent accident investigators to investigate the issue. Whilst these investigators might have been appointed by one insurer or other and might be biased into finding in favour of that party, none the less they are still expected to show integrity in their findings. They can't just make stuff up. So your claim they are 'just conspiracy theorists' is utter nonsense.

Meyer-Werft provide a huge amount of employment here and around northern Europe. Their recent 'biggest cruise liner in the world', Icon of the Seas, was built here in Turku. Meyers-Werft nearly went bankrupt earlier this year because the building industry has to invest a lot of money upfront. Yes, reputation damage would be a big reason to resist admitting liability for the MV Estonia accident. On the other hand, whilst Meyer-Werft might admit the bow visor was a poor design, causing various SOLAS exemptions by the Finnish-Estonian-Swedish shipping companies (i.e., it was exempt from conforming in some cases because of its localised activities), but dispute the bow visor rising and falling off could have (a) caused the ship to sink in 35MIN (= minutes in time) or (b) would have fallen off because of 'strong waves' owing to reasonable doubt and scepticism, given their expertise in the industry and (c) the heavily doctored video of the Swedish navy, taken during a survey, which it has not been allowed to see in full, and which the Estonian side of the JAIC complained about.

So, to sum up: being 'biased' does not equate to being corrupt, which a professional person would strongly dispute.

* And even then, the shipping insurers are sitting on huge funds of money so whilst it would sting to admit liability and pay out, they would still be extremely wealthy.
 
Last edited:
So you know they're not biased in favour of the shipbuilder because;

A) that would be unethical.
B) Mind you there are worse things than being biased.
C) The shipbuilder might go bust if they got found liable so they might have a motive to be less than straightforward but their insurer presumably has pots of money so I expect it's fine really.
 
Vixen said:
Whilst the German experts were hired, appointed or volunteered themselves for Meyer-Werft, shipbuilders, nonetheless they are still professionally bound by ethics.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't those same ethics apply to the JAIC and its investigators? You have roundly accused them of distorting or omitting the truth despite an equal obligation.

Vixen said:
...nonetheless, they can't just make things up, owing to professional standards, any more than I can make up profit and loss and balance sheet figures to save my employers from paying the tax they are obliged to pay under Tax Law.
Click to expand...
Since you see fit to lecture me on the ethical standards of my profession, allow me to lecture you on yours. At least in the U.S., the tax code is purposely byzantine exactly to create the kind of ambiguity that allows a creative accountant to lessen his client's tax bill in any number of gray areas.

It is no violation of professional ethics in engineering to suggest alternative explanations for a happenstance event. And no, there is no professional requirement to substantiate any such hypothesis to some arbitrary degree of credibility when the task at hand is simply to render an opinion. Nothing in engineering ethics prevents such opinions from expressing or embodying bias. None of the pontification you've engaged in has any basis in fact. You're the one making stuff up.

Vixen said:
So, to sum up: being 'biased' does not equate to being corrupt, which a professional person would strongly dispute.
Click to expand...
But you are not a person in my profession, so your inexperienced opinion ("Because I say so") isn't an informed expectation. Being a devil's advocate or questioning findings that are the product of others' inductive reasoning is in no way "corrupt" or sanctionable behavior. It may be biased and ultimately unconvincing, just as Boeing engineers failed to convince everyone that the crash of its airliners could have been pilot error instead of malfunctioning software. But it is not unethical at all.

Once again you're cobbling up a categorical rebuttal to a specific case. "Those people can't have done what they did because they're honorable people who wouldn't do such things." That's not convincing when the case at hand is, "Well, yes, they did those things." What you imagine they might have been ethically obliged to do is irrelevant.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone have an idea when the JAIC update report is due to be published?

I mean, we already know for certain that it will broadly endorse the findings of the original commission, but it'd still be nice to see it in writing...
 
LondonJohn said:
Does anyone have an idea when the JAIC update report is due to be published?

I mean, we already know for certain that it will broadly endorse the findings of the original commission, but it'd still be nice to see it in writing...
Click to expand...
End of this year, according to the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority. (That page contains quite a lot about the last years investigations, but is in Swedish).

Formally, it's not the JAIC anymore, it's the Estonian accident investigation authority that runs the investigation, supported by their Swedish and Finnish colleagues.
 
About to learn more about some of the conspiracy theories!

sitp.online

SkeptiCamp 2025 Schedule - Skeptics in the Pub Online

Friday 24th October Find us in the Park Suite on the fourth floor of the Mercure, Manchester, and if you can’t make it, we’ll be livestreaming the event at twitch.tv/sitp from 11am UK time. 10:45 am Doors Open The doors will be opened and you can come in and get your seat! 11:00 am Start […]
sitp.online sitp.online

The sinking of the MS Estonia Pontus Böckman
In 1994 the ferry MS Estonia sank on the Baltic Sea, With 852 lives lost, it is the deadliest peacetime shipwreck ever to have occurred in European waters. With the instability of the region and the Soviet Union falling apart less than three years before, the tragedy fueled an endless amount of conspiracy theories, each more bizarre the other. What are they and will people ever be convinced by the official story?

Pontus Böckman is the president of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations (ECSO), former president of the Swedish Skeptics (VoF) and co-host of the European Skeptics Podcast, the ESP.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom