I was not sure about posting a link, as I have full access within the library. I figured if I gave enough details about it, which I purposely did, what was available to the general public could be easily found. I am sorry you consider that impolite.
Ah, that explains it. Fair enough then.
This article makes many interesting and, I believe, relevant observations. It addresses some of the information previously discussed in this thread and it introduces some aspects of digestion not previously discussed. I understand the study is not completely relevant, as it is not titled “Why Meredith Kercher Had no Chyme in Her Duodenum at her Time of Death.” I had trouble locating that particular article. However this study does contain some details I find interesting:
If you'd introduced it as a bit of interesting and relevant background reading for interested people I would have absolutely no problem with it. However you made a very specific claim about what was in this paper. You claimed there was evidence in there that should alter our time of death calculations based on t(lag).
That evidence is not in the paper.
You then quote a variety of snippets which you think, taken together, might hint that a meal of pizza and some apple crumble afterwards might take longer than something else to begin to pass into the bowel. However competent scientists write very precisely and say only what they know to be true. If they don't say that meal composition has a significant effect on t(lag), they don't know that to be true.
If something is stated as fact in a peer-reviewed journal, that's highly authoritative. Such claims are occasionally falsified, but by and large they are as reliable as any factual claim gets in this imperfect world. That's why we look to scientific papers for evidence about these sorts of contested issues. However such papers lend
absolutely no authority to claims which they
do not explicitly state, but which you think are probably implied by taking several snippets together and forming your own conclusions.
I could keep quoting but it is better to just go read the study. It compliments the information posted by London John; it describes the processes prior to the chyme entering the duodenum and the variables involved.
Moreover, it goes on to state different foods cause much slower gastric emptying. Yes, this is emptying however it is logical to surmise the reasoning for the delay in emptying is because of the increased time in the digestive process within the stomach.
If you go read the study, energy-dense food is released into the bowel more slowly than low-energy-density food. So in other words no, you're wrong, time to digest is not the sole factor involved and in some cases food which is emptied more slowly would have the same t(lag) as food which is emptied faster.
That is the only point I was trying to make – that there are additional variables in play making stomach contents and the digestion process too variable of a ToD indicator upon which to rely.
Now you're compounded the error by stating a conclusion which is utterly unsupported.
Nothing in that paper even hints at the possibility of a meal of pizza and apple crumble under reasonably normal conditions having a t(lag) of five hours, which is what would be required to make the prosecution's time of death work.
You might as well be arguing: "Police radar is only accurate to within five or ten kilometres per hour. Plus I have found another scientific paper which might be taken to imply that police radar is a little bit more variable than that, although it doesn't explicitly say so at any point. Therefore when it says I was going one hundred kilometres per hour, I could actually have been going thirty kilometres per hour. After all, there are additional variables in play making radar too variable an indicator upon which to rely!".
You needn’t be so insulting in your post replies. Prefacing an insult with a disclaimer does not make it any less insulting. “Maybe I’m wrong but you’re a stupid idiot” is a passive aggressive insult but it is still offensive and it reduces this forum to the same level as those with which people with differing opinions have been asked to leave.
I didn't call you a stupid idiot. That kind of personal attack isn't tolerated here. Nor will you ever be banned or asked to leave for holding an unpopular opinion.
However the JREF isn't Happy Bunny Land where all ideas are friends. If you post here you should expect your evidence and arguments to come under scrutiny and possibly robust attack.
People are not fair game for attack here, but
arguments have absolutely no such protection.
If you don't like being carpeted for misrepresenting a scientific paper and claiming that it provides evidence to support a claim that it does not, then you should read such papers thoroughly and make sure you understand what they actually say. This isn't theology where you can take a passage of holy text and guess about what it "really means". It's science, and scientific writing means what it says and no more.
If you aren't sure what a paper is saying but you think it might be relevant, you should present it as such. It would have been fine if you'd said "Hey guys, I'm not sure but this paper seems like it might be saying something relevant, could someone read it for me and see if it contains evidence that should cast doubt on our current understanding of the plausible t(lag) in Meredith's case?". Instead you said "Hey guys I found a paper that proves that your understanding of t(lag) is completely wrong, ta-dah!".
