Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[lector]

never mind

 

[stilicho]

Taken as a whole, this and other posts of yours to the same effect would lead a reasonable person to believe that you feel it is impossible for any DNA testing to be presented as reliable evidence in court under any circumstances.

That's what I thought too, Q.

Most importantly, and this is to any of the three supporting the DNA contamination claim: Why aren't the defence teams vigorously pursuing this avenue? If they raise it at the appeals they are going to lose and appear foolish in the bargain.

Note, too, that halides1 has again brought Dr Thompson into the debate. Thompson is specifically talking about the Houston and Washington State crime labs and not about DNA testing in general. There's more here: http://www.govtech.com/gt/375562.

Why are we introducing comparisons between known cases of widespread contamination and a laboratory which has never been the subject of a negative audit or even a single media article about wrongful conviction based on its results?

@halides1: Can you please stop throwing around the names of these individuals as though they were speaking about DNA testing in general?

 

[Matthew Best]

Taken as a whole, this and other posts of yours to the same effect would lead a reasonable person to believe that you feel it is impossible for any DNA testing to be presented as reliable evidence in court under any circumstances.

I guess I must be an unreasonable person, because I do not get that conclusion from Halides' posts.

 

[stilicho]

I guess I must be an unreasonable person, because I do not get that conclusion from Halides' posts.

I won't ask you to explain halides1's diversions, MB, but you must see as easily as I do that he has injected Dr Thompson into the discussion about this case (for at least a second time) while his observations have nothing whatsoever to do with it. He has been an avid critic of US crime labs where contamination is widespread, independent auditors have found problems that were ignored, convictions have been overturned, and in some cases where the labs were shut down.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with the Italian DNA lab.

Halides1 has yet to explain, too, how the Italian DNA lab can be reliable in the cases of PL and RG yet unreliable in the cases of RS and AK. Exactly what mechanism of contamination is at work here?

 

[Fulcanelli]

@Alt+F4: I recommend that participants in this thread bookmark this link:

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewforum.php?f=8&sid=0c51e03859f5fc8519b4d1d99b156208

That's the "In Their Own Words" portion of the PMF site. It has a wealth of information on what the principals in the case had to say. Here is RS (18 NOV 2007) explaining why Meredith's DNA would be expected to be found on a knife in his kitchen drawer:

The fact that there is Meredith's DNA on the kitchen is because
once while cooking together, I shifted myself in the house handling
the knife, I had the point on her hand, and immediately after I
apologized but she had nothing done to her. So the only real
explanation of the kitchen knife is this.

(Source: http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=666#p666 )

It's a Google translation from Italian so there are some curious turns of the phrase. This is RS's alibi and refutes all the testimony from our resident JREF 'experts' claiming that Meredith's DNA could not possibly have been found on the knife. RS disagrees with Dan O, Kestrel, and halides1.

Hi Stilicho...not a google translation. This here was professionally translated by Belle: http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=586#p586 This version isn't a google translation either and was translated by Skeptical Bystander: http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=666#p666

Anything on site that's actually a google translation is always marked as such. If it isn't indicated as a google translation in it's introduction, then it's a proper translation.

 

[Fulcanelli]

In comment #2501 Alt+F4 wrote, “And his admission came freely, not as a result of police interrogation. As far as I know when he was informed of the DNA test results (by his lawyers or family?) he made up the story of the dinner knife-pricking incident and wrote it in his prison diary. This I believe happened in November 2007.”

Fulcanelli replied (#2502), “Yes, after having seen the knife had been found on TV.”

Alt+F4 responded (#2503), “Ah indeed. So he invented the story even before the knife was tested. Well I don't this would fall under even the broadest definition of ‘false memory syndrome’.” (emphasis added)

Alt+F4 does appear to be making this claim.

halides1, STOP misrepresenting people! You left off, deliberately I would suppose, the rest of the conversation. To your last quote of Alt+F4 I replied:

Fulcanelli: "No, it was reported by the media Meredith's DNA had been found on the blade and Raffaele saw that on TV. Then he wrote his diary entry on it with the story of pricking Meredith while she was round his place and they were cooking a meal."

To which Alt+F4 replied:

Alt+F4: "Ah, ok. Thank you for the clairfication."


So halides1, as you well know, Alt+F4 is making no such claim at all! Do you perform your science in the same dishonest way?

 

[Fiona]

Fiona wrote, “There has been no instance of contamination in that lab in the last 7 years
There is no contamination from anyone else, nor on any sample bar those that are inconvenient to the defence
The protocols were observed by independent expert witnesses who confirmed they were fine
Controls were done which did not show any contamination

As was said at about page 10 or earlier: any dna test can be attacked in this way. But unless you can show even one tiny scinitilla of evidence that contamination did happen then it didn't. So where is this evidence?”

Let’s look at these five points.

(1) For Stefanoni to claim that no contamination has occurred is dubious. “The occasional ‘contamination event’ is inevitable, said [Ed] Blake, the California scientist, but crime labs aren't routinely disclosing those miscues.”

“’Who can believe the only contamination they have is those (cases) where they can detect it? There's inevitably lots more,’ [Professor William] Thompson said.
 That contention was recently confirmed by a study in the May 2004 Journal of Forensic Sciences that found that clean controls don't guarantee contaminant-free evidence.”

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/183007_crimelab22.html

(2) The bra clasp has the DNA from five individuals on it. It is hard to rule out contamination in this instance.

(3) Dr. Donald Riley wrote, “Full profile contaminants have been documented on multiple occasions and in multiple laboratories. Partial profile contaminants are more common and sometimes constitute a poorly recognized risk in using partial profiles in evidentiary samples as evidence. When contamination occurs there is rarely any way to confirm how it happened.” http://www.scientific.org/tutorials/articles/riley/riley.html

(4) Negative controls do not show every instance of contamination. Riley wrote, “Alternatively, the blank may show no profile, consistent with, but not proving that contamination didn’t occur… Negative controls also can't rule out contamination of individual samples. The individual samples lack individual signs of contamination if it occurs.” Moreover, contamination cannot be observed with the naked eye, so the presence of observers means little.

(5) It would help to have an independent analysis of the work. The defense asked for this but was denied.

I asked for evidence about this case; not vague generalisations.

 

[Matthew Best]

Those two translations appear to be identical.

 

[stilicho]

Anything on site that's actually a google translation is always marked as such. If it isn't indicated as a google translation in it's introduction, then it's a proper translation.

I thought it was because it's got the trademarks of Google translations such as mysterious use of prepositions (eg. "on" for "in"), unusual verbs, and pronouns mistranslated.

I hope it's clear that I meant you can read RS's and AK's own unsolicited and unedited words (regardless of the translation). The other one that we don't talk about as much is RS's 112 call where he states that there's a lot of blood in the cottage but there really wasn't. There was a lot of blood inside the locked room.

 

[Fulcanelli]

With respect to the KS case “Judge Paolo Michelli, during the pretrial, took the conspiracy for granted. He boasted that he began his reasoning with all three suspects in the murder room. So much for innocent until proven guilty (http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/archives/179047.asp).”

Why are you channeling FOA Dempsey when you have Micheli's report to refer to directly?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Her so called "pioneering technique" consisted of operating a device beyond it's scientifically established limits without doing any studies to determine reliability of the readings so obtained. It's a classic problem of results oriented "forensic science", where the overriding goal is to produce evidence supporting the prosecution.

Oh, this was a 'magical' machine that could 'make' DNA?

 

[Fiona]

Why are you channeling FOA Dempsey when you have Micheli's report to refer to directly?

Because halides1 has no ability to evaluate a source. If he is an academic, as he claims, I fear for his students

 

[Fulcanelli]

The problem with this bit of evidence is that 50 picograms of DNA is less than a dozen cells. Below the threshold for LCN DNA even when done under proper circumstances. That is in a separate facility with a positive air pressure system and filtration to keep any microscopic particles floating around the room out of the equipment. It was instead processed in the same lab and prepared on the same work surfaces used to process dozens of other samples containing Meredith's DNA. All it takes is a dust spec to contaminate the sample.

So what do you expect Sollecito to do when he hears about this evidence? If he and Amanda are innocent, would you expect him to simply state he had no idea how the DNA got on that knife? After all, from this thread it's clear that few people believe that DNA contamination exists. Most people seem to think it works just like it does on CSI. Where DNA is never present unless it came from a criminal or victim and it's always traceable to a crime.

Oh no, Kestrel and his 'dust' again. Amazing how so many thousands of samples and people had been through that lab and a speck of 'their' dust never got on that blade or in the machine. According to you, Raffaele was trotting around the cottage 'raining skin' which then somehow got transfered onto the clasp in abundant quantities. Yet, Stefanoni who worked in that lab almost every single day wasn't raining so much as a 'speck' since not a 'speck' of hers was on that blade, and neither was a 'speck' from a single other living soul, not other technician, no other individual that had ever come into contact with either the knife or the machine previously and nobody else whose sample's had been through that lab...amazing!

This is supposed to be a logical and acceptable argument Kestrel?

 

[Fulcanelli]

The post you are responding to was about the possibility of contamination. I wasn't discussing the issue of interpreting the results. Do you admit that contamination is possible? If not, please explain how the Italian lab made it impossible for contamination to occur?

Also, where is the rule stating a skeptic should explore only one possibility when multiple possibilities exist?

'Anything's' possible. It's possible Meredith was murdered by space aliens. It doesn't make it very bloody likely though, does it? 'Possible' isn't enough.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Taken as a whole, this and other posts of yours to the same effect would lead a reasonable person to believe that you feel it is impossible for any DNA testing to be presented as reliable evidence in court under any circumstances.

Exactly, after all, couldn't exactly the same arguments as made by halides1 be made for Rudy Guede? But for some, arguing contamination for him, even though that too is 'possible', simply isn't convenient in their agendas.

 

[Fulcanelli]

If the work is pathbreaking, let Dr. Stefanoni submit it for publication where it will be peer reviewed.

Who is to say she hasn't already?

 

[Fulcanelli]

I thought it was because it's got the trademarks of Google translations such as mysterious use of prepositions (eg. "on" for "in"), unusual verbs, and pronouns mistranslated.

I hope it's clear that I meant you can read RS's and AK's own unsolicited and unedited words (regardless of the translation). The other one that we don't talk about as much is RS's 112 call where he states that there's a lot of blood in the cottage but there really wasn't. There was a lot of blood inside the locked room.

Well, actually, according to our translators and Italians on the board, Raffaele writes in an exceedingly strange way (his phrasing and grammar) and sounds rather forced and faked. This is why it sounds rather awkward in translation, even 'googlish' to coin a phrase. I recommend searching out Yummi's posts on PMF in regard to Raffaele's writing style in his diary, they are quite interesting.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Because halides1 has no ability to evaluate a source. If he is an academic, as he claims, I fear for his students

Treating the data honestly is always a good place to start from, I find

 

[Fulcanelli]

Those two translations appear to be identical.

Pretty much. Why would they be overly different, the source material hasn't changed?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Also, where is the rule stating a skeptic should explore only one possibility when multiple possibilities exist?

How about the possibility that Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy together murdered Meredith Kercher? For all your pious talk of 'exploring multiple possibilities' you are rather picky about which ones you want to 'explore' and seem to have an allergy when it comes to exploring that one.