Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

The fact that you are trying to use ROLAIDS as a way of increasing the time it takes for food to digest in the stomach means you have come to accept the 2 to 3 hours that the coroner determined. Your throwing BB's at a battleship hoping to sink it.

To say the least, it's implicitly accepting that in the absence of some such extremely strong, so-far-unknown confounding factor Meredith can't have died at 23:30 and the Massei narrative cannot be correct.

The Massei narrative (once this has been admitted) is not so much hanging by a thread, as maybe just conceivably hanging by an invisible super-strong thread unknown to science that despite a lot of searching nobody has been able to find.

 

[katy_did]

Just shards of recent Itlian studies to illustrate the complexity of the topic:

Prof L. Benini (University of Verona) in two studies, each on 8 subjects, observed the stomach emptying after a solid/mix meal of 700-870 kcal., and he found that the “normal” value for the emptying of 50% of stomach content was 186 minutes (± 44 min*) if the meal contained 4 grams of fibres. But for a similar 700-870 kcal meal containing 20 grams of fibres, the normal time for 50% content emptying would be 231 minutes (±49 min*). Technique for measurement is the ecography with measurement of antral diameters. Note the very high errors.
In another 10-subject study, Prof. R. Ricci (University of Rome), found that with a meal of 1050 kcal (solid+ liquid) the normal value to achieve a reduction of stomach content to 60% is would be 300 minutes (similar measurement technique: antral volume ecography).

The measurement is an issue. The G.I.S.M.A.D (Gruppo Italiano per lo studio della motilità dell’apparato digerente) defines schintigraphy (radiograpfic analysis) as “inaccurate”.

One should also be aware that literature studies create homogeneous groups, and results are thus referred to homogeneous starting conditions, like: patients who have not been eating for the previous 12 h., a meal that is not followed by other subsequent meals (no further continuous or discontinuous food assumption), no contemporary or subsequent alcohol assumption, similar kind of meals and controlled meals…. While other researches exist to investigate how inhomogeneous ways of food assumption can influence the expected figures in various ways.

I keep waiting for someone to provide a scientific source contradicting the arguments put forward on the thread - since I'd be really interested to read it - but it seems like I'm still waiting, though at least this is an attempt. But even taking into account the very longest times indicated here, even assuming Meredith ate a huge meal of over 1000 calories (extremely unlikely, based on her friends' testimonies; she would have had to eat the entire pizza herself), that would still seem to indicate that by 23:00, 40% of the meal should already have left her stomach. It still contradicts Massei.

 

[Chris C]

I keep waiting for someone to provide a scientific source contradicting the arguments put forward on the thread - since I'd be really interested to read it - but it seems like I'm still waiting, though at least this is an attempt. But even taking into account the very longest times indicated here, even assuming Meredith ate a huge meal of over 1000 calories (extremely unlikely, based on her friends' testimonies; she would have had to eat the entire pizza herself), that would still seem to indicate that by 23:00, 40% of the meal should already have left her stomach. It still contradicts Massei.

What they fail to realize it doesn't matter if it was 2000 calories or 200,000 calories. The stomach doesn't work like a washing machine. When using a washing machine you put everything in and then it washes. At some point during the washing it hits the rinse cycle and everything empties at once. The stomach doesn't work like that. When food in your stomach is at the point of digestion where it leaves the stomach, it moves to the duodenum. Regardless if the rest of the meal is fully digested. The rest of the meal would stay in your stomach and continue to digest. Thats why the 5+ hours without ANY DIGESTED FOOD moving to the duodenum is impossible. Something would have moved to the duodenum long before the 5 hour point.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What they fail to realize it doesn't matter if it was 2000 calories or 200,000 calories. The stomach doesn't work like a washing machine. When using a washing machine you put everything in and then it washes. At some point during the washing it hits the rinse cycle and everything empties at once. The stomach doesn't work like that. When food in your stomach is at the point of digestion where it leaves the stomach, it moves to the duodenum. Regardless if the rest of the meal is fully digested. The rest of the meal would stay in your stomach and continue to digest. Thats why the 5+ hours without ANY DIGESTED FOOD moving to the duodenum is impossible. Something would have moved to the duodenum long before the 5 hour point.

This isn't completely correct: Large meals, alcohol and so on all can affect t(lag) to some extent, and nobody has said otherwise.

However we have already excluded all such known factors, leaving a real problem for those hoping to find scientific evidence for a t(lag) of five hours in healthy young women eating small-to-moderate sized meals with no alcohol, drugs, stress, overeating or any other relevant, known confounding factors.

 

[Withnail1969]

And please do not argue from this forum's authority. Point me to specific evidence, please. Or at least the "demolishing" posts.

i didn't argue from this forum's authority. What i requested was for you to stop stating 'the court believed it' to back up anything you say. The court's decision is exactly what's in question here, or this thread would not exist.

 

[Amazer]

i didn't argue from this forum's authority. What i requested was for you to stop stating 'the court believed it' to back up anything you say. The court's decision is exactly what's in question here, or this forum would not exist.

Lol, this forum was around long before this case came to be discussed here. And it will most likely still be around long after this case has reached its final conclusion.

This particular thread however is a different story.

 

[Withnail1969]

LMAO, you "demolished" a witness testimony, in a "forum"? You demolish a witness's testimony in a court of law, on the stand. You can say you disagree with the testimony, and with the court's judgment, but to say you can demolish said testimony on an internet forum is a little self-aggrandizing if you ask me.

'discredited' then, if you prefer. You'd have to be some kind of glassy-eyed fanatic to actually believe Nara's 'scream of death', and 'leaves rustling underfoot' which only she can hear, but no matter.

 

[quadraginta]

I have no doubt he did it. Who else would have done it? This is a textbook example of a type of homicide that has many precedents, including John List and Jeffrey MacDonald, who remained free for many years before he was finally convicted.

Do you believe that MacDonald was justly convicted?

 

[Chris C]

This isn't completely correct: Large meals, alcohol and so on all can affect t(lag) to some extent, and nobody has said otherwise.

However we have already excluded all such known factors, leaving a real problem for those hoping to find scientific evidence for a t(lag) of five hours in healthy young women eating small-to-moderate sized meals with no alcohol, drugs, stress, overeating or any other relevant, known confounding factors.

The only things I found that would cause someone's stomach to go beyond the 4 hr mark for gastric emptying to start are Gastroparesis and Cancer. When people talk about alcohol or drugs affecting t(lag) your talking about minutes not hours.

 

[Matthew Best]

Do you believe that MacDonald was justly convicted?

Please feel free to start another thread to discuss a different murder trial.

 

[JREF2010]

i didn't argue from this forum's authority. What i requested was for you to stop stating 'the court believed it' to back up anything you say. The court's decision is exactly what's in question here, or this thread would not exist.

'discredited' then, if you prefer. You'd have to be some kind of glassy-eyed fanatic to actually believe Nara's 'scream of death', and 'leaves rustling underfoot' which only she can hear, but no matter.

I agree, my analogy of Massei believing Nara, is like someone who denounces religion, but finds little green martians from mars as credible.

 

[Machiavelli]

I asked you about this before and you didn't respond. Do you not acknowledge that if Meredith was not murdered at 23:30 the Massei narrative is falsified, and therefore Amanda and Raffaele were convicted based on a false theory?

I already gave you the related information about my acknowledgments before you asked, and then I gave repeated statements after. I put in clear that my acknowledgmnts on the point are:
1) Even if it was proven that Meredith was attacked exactly at 21:10 I would still consider Amanda guilty.
2) The court of assise's report contains indeed narrative (or more than one), but the narrative is not the basis of Amanda's conviction, and I do not build reasonings based on the narrative contained in Massei's theory. A change in Massei's narrative would simply lead to formulize a new accusation narrative, not to innocence.
3) The defendants are convicted on the basis of evidence, not on the basis of the theory subsequently constructed. The theory is almost always false strictly speaking. A motivation report may also contain more than one conflicting narratives. A time of death at 21:30 for example would falsify part of Massei's narrative, but not falsify the basis of thir conviction nor the evidence.
4) Nara's testimony is not falsified by changing the time of death. Only Curatolo would be falsified.

On the rest, you are merely unfloding a series of arbitrary beliefs of yours. You are not even able to draw conclusions on a singls sentence written by Raffaele Sollecito (or to acknowledge difference between a diganosis of Narcissistic Personality disorder and evidence of narcissistic personality style) yet you feel certain you can deny threads of universal literature and medical culture, you introduce "certain" variants on you own, you accuse others of being not rigorous or blind, you assert the need of new studies targeted to your own needs and you refuse to search the related topics, you deny the existing citations, you start from a premise of distrust towards the interlocutor, you decide that others have "excuses" instead of "reasons", you dismiss opinions you don't know, you use arguments that you declare to be not serious ...

 

[Supernaut]

Stomach emptying t(lag) for dummies

All these facts and figures seem to render the concepts under discussion incomprehesible to some individuals.

So, think of this way;

After you've eaten, as long as the food remains in your stomach being churned around to break it down and prepare it for absorption in the duodenum and small intestine, you will not feel hungry, you feel 'full'.

At some point after the stomach begins emptying you might feel like eating again. Real hunger will be felt when the small intestine is also empty, considerably later.

You eat a pizza at 6.30 PM, and an apple crumble* about 7.30.

Do you imagine you will still feel 'full' at 11.30 that evening? IOW, with the pizza you ate STILL in your stomach?

This is what Massei and his water-carriers want to believe is possible, and it is plainly wrong - simple common sense says so.

(*the food groups are proteins, fats and carbs. By far the simplest and quickest to break down are carbs (which is what a desert like apple crumble largely consists of), the other two are more complex processes and take longer - hence bacon and eggs will take 2 or three times as long to leave the stomach as bowl of breakfast cereal of the same calorific value.)

 

[odeed]

Funnily enough I never brought up the David Hendricks case, but I assume it was mentioned as it had similarities with the pizza theory being pushed here.

I deleted portions of the following quote as they weren't needed for my analysis:



Great curve and analysis. I think there must be a simpler way to state the results.

Assume that the stab to the neck at 9:10 stopped digestion:

T=130 (2 hrs, 10 min) 95% likely: Stabbed in neck at 9:10, meal at 7:00.
T=102 (1 hr, 42 min) 75% likely: Stabbed in neck at 9:10, meal at 7:28.
T=82 (1 hr, 22 min) 50% likely: Stabbed in neck at 9:10, meal at 7:48.

Or, assuming the meal was at 7:48
T=130 (2 hrs, 10 min) 95% likely: Meal at 7:48, Stabbed in neck before 9:58.
T=102 (1 hr, 42 min) 75% likely: Meal at 7:48, Stabbed in neck before 9:30.
T=82 (1 hr, 22 min) 50% likely: Meal at 7:48, Stabbed in neck before 9:10.

What would the time of death be if T(lag) was 147 minutes as in this study http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/12/1243.pdf instead of the 82 minutes LondonJohn pulled.

 

[Supernaut]

So what is YOUR basis for reality? Did you know her? No. Do you know for a fact that the people who testified were lying? No. You assume you do because they were prosecution witnesses?

I did NOT say they were "lying", but that they were coached - ALL the prosecution witnesses were.

And even then, all they had to offer were anecdotes about the casual bitching that most small peer-groups of young people, particularly women, indulge in with one and other. Mignini then used these and embellished them, to say the least, for his childish "Amanda killed Meredith because she hated her" scenario (motive v.3).

So does that mean that any defense witnesses that say anything positive about Amanda are lying as well? So what more can any of us go by than what those around her say?

Unless you can prove that you knew her as well as these people, you have NO right to judge what my characterization of her is. Im sick of your absolutely indignant responses just because i have an opinion of someone indicted for murder, someone who none of us knows personally. No one is insulting your daughter or mother, stop acting like it. If you disagree with how she is being portrayed, at least try to discuss it calmly and rationally like others here have.

Again, Missy;

show us a verifiable source for a statement or testimony from someone who actually knows or is acquainted with her in which the "many negatives in Amanda's character" that you "discern" are even hinted at? Understand?

This is not about "opinions", and spare me the faux "who me? how dare you!" indignation - it is transparent.

 

[daydreamer]

It takes 5 minutes, not 20, where in the world did you hear that?

According to GoogleEarth its about .3 miles. Covering that distance in 5 mins is a about a 16 minute-mile which is a very quick pace. Also that is door step to door step. It does not take into account time taken to leave the RS house (jackets, foors steps, etc), traffic enroute (cars and people), hills (if any), etc. Assuming they were not in a big hurry, I would say it would be 15 minutes from the time he got off the phone to arriving at the cottage.

 

[Machiavelli]

for a t(lag) of five hours in healthy young women eating small-to-moderate sized meals with no alcohol, drugs, stress, overeating or any other relevant, known confounding factors.

The six above mentioned parametres are arbitrarily estabilshed by you. In reality they are not esteblished data of the case at all, and none of them is even remotely required in a theory of the facts and and in assessing the basis for conviction.
Alcohol assumption was assesed as significant by dr. Lalli. The small size of the meal is merely an arbitrary statement. The fact that the meal was properly baked or well digestable is a mere guess. The absence of a time of stress is an arbitrary and even unlikely conjecture. The fact that confounding factors have to be known is an arbitrary logical clause. The five hours lag is absolutely not necessary in a narrative consistent with the evidence of guilt. [Unrelated with the previous point: by the way the court of assise's report and the appeals do not even contain a mention (indeirect or direct) to a 5 hours lag time; the defense "locates" the main meal between 18:30 and 19:00 and the same is defined by defence experts as a "discontinous meal assumed between 18:00 and 20:00", not as a "meal eaten at 18:30" or at "18:00", while the time of 18:00 given by some witnesses was given as uncertain and with caveats]. And the assumption that guilt would depend on the "Massei narrative" is, again, a wrong and arbitrary idea.

 

[Supernaut]

No it doesn't count. I know I've said it before (numerous times...), but the human stomach is not a single large homogeneous "bag". In fact, it is capable of muscular contraction into separate areas - the cardia, fundus, corpus and pylorus - each of which deal with different parts of the initial digestion process. Evolution has seen nicely to the ability to continuously digest, owing to the part-grazing nature of our ancestors.

Because of this, the pizza meal would have probably passed through to the end of the corpus and even into the pylorus by the time that the apple crumble meal appeared at the cardia. The two would have been kept separate, and treated individually.

I'll reiterate something I posted a few minutes ago - a desert like apple crumble is mostly carbohydrate (starch and sugars), which breaks down into sugars very easily and quickly. It actually begins before they even reach the stomach, an enzyme in saliva, 'amylase', begins the process during chewing.

(I got a 'A' at o-level biology )

 

[LondonJohn]

You have all the studies you need to conclude you don't have a solid argument, if you look for them.

This is one of the most outstandingly poor replies I have ever read. Show us all where any study has found T(lag) times of 5 hours (or even 4.5 hours), for ANY type of meal, then we can talk.

 

[LondonJohn]

These are articles I found on the Hendricks appeals

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-22/news/8802260583_1_conviction-murders-david-hendricks

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...four-murders-convicted-illinois-supreme-court

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/..._1_opening-arguments-murder-victims-new-trial

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...-trial-david-hendricks-illinois-supreme-court

I also read somewhere that the forensic evidence, mainly the stomach content, was argued over for 22 days in the retrial.

and that the Judge in the original said in the last link



From the appeal in 1988,



So all the expert testimony on the stomach contents and there is a 6 1/2 hour window, and the prosecution experts could not convince the the jury in a second trial, or Judge Baner twice that the children were killed before 11:00 pm....

... and this case was brought up in the thread for what reason? To show that pizza takes two hours to digest?

Either you believe that pizza only takes 2 hours to digest, and Hendricks is a murderer walking free, or the contents of Kercher's stomach will not give Knox an alibi.

If it was up to some people on this thread Hendricks would have been found guilty based on a mushroom, a bell curve and numbers pulled from their duodenum, with no chance of an appeal.

Oh dear. You're confusing the prosecution's high burden of proof in its attempt to convict Hendricks, with the defence's need to merely show reasonable doubt in the case of Knox and Sollecito. And even if the prosecution proved that the children died before Hendricks left town, they still need to do far more to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Hendricks was the killer. DO you see?