@Kevin_Lowe:
Yes, of course it wasn`t an "advanced problem" in probability theory. Didn`t I mention this in my initial post?
I`ve earned some knowledge in probability theory/statistics due to my university education, so it wasn`t that difficult for me to construct this problem.
My intention was to pick one of the many scientific fields, of which you (indirectly or not) claim to have some deeper understanding and post a problem to check whether you are in possesion of the basic knowledge in this field and are able to apply it.
It's reasonable you should be interested in this issue, but wouldn't it make a
lot more sense to focus on the specific science-based claims which are pertinent to this case?
As I said earlier, even if you "caught me out" on some issue unrelated to the case, at best this would give you very weak reason to believe that I was wrong on a matter pertaining to the case, especially since everything I have argued for I have argued for in public, with multiple watchful eyes on me some of whom do know quite a lot about the relevant science or maths.
Is it unreasonable of me to suspect that you are trying to set us abstract maths problems as a substitute for criticising the
relevant science and reasoning, because you have no good criticisms of the
relevant science and reasoning to make?
I mean, my goal wasn`t to show you up, but rather to get a confirmation of my feeling, that you`re sometimes (or often? I`m not sure) using scientific fields, of which you don`t know much about, to bolster your arguments.
Reading your many posts in this thread, I think, that you are anything but "scientifically illiterate", as you would call it, but that you are treading on thin ice, when you are "using science", that you (sometimes/often) hardly understand, to repeatedly declare, that you are much smarter than more than a dozen judges/jurors and a lot of (real) experts so far and tell, that you have "proven", although, which is another point, none of us has access to all the evidence in this case, that the defendants are innocent.
As a rational person I'm cautious about making such claims, but when I've done my work and checked my work and that's exactly what is happening then I don't refrain from saying so on the basis of false modesty.
That said, the meme that "experts got it wrong" on these issues is misleading to say the least. Dr Lalli and Professor Introna got the time of death right, pretty much.
If you read closely and follow the magician's hands, Professors Norelli, Ronchi and Cingolani
actually never say in the Massei report that a t(lag) of five hours is plausible. They are quoted as making some claims about t(1/2), and some claims about how stomach contents analysis is not generally all that reliable, and that stomach contents analysis
can vary by one to twelve hours. Follow the magician's hands though. Is it possible that stomach contents conclusions
can vary by one to twelve hours under different circumstances, but that in this case we can still draw a hard line at 22:30 as the very upper limit of the possible time of death? Is it possible that t(1/2) can be five hours but t(lag) cannot? Is it possible that even though stomach contents analysis is not usually reliable that in this particular case it's good enough to contradict the prosecution theory decisively?
Well technically yes, you might say, but it's certainly not the impression you get, is it? If you weren't careful reading pages 181-183 of the original report (177-179 of the PMF translation) you could certainly come away with the idea that Norelli, Ronchi and Cingolani had actually contradicted the t(lag) argument, as opposed to being quoted as saying various other things that never quite addressed the point. So either they did in fact address it and Massei/Christiani left those vital pieces of evidence out, or Massei/Christiani are being very sneaky in cherry-picking sound bites to dance around an inconvenient scientific fact. They wouldn't do that, would they? Surely if you come away from a naive reading of the passage thinking X is true, X must be true right?
Then again the magician's hands did go below the table for a second there... are you quite sure that you saw what you thought you saw? Especially given that when we do the same thing with our hands above the table, we get the conclusion that Meredith Kercher could not possibly have died at 23:30?
