Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kaosium]

Bluster. Nowhere have I suggested "searching for more data which is in agreement with the hypothesis". We're talking simply about the pro-innocence side asking the right questions. Both the kitchen knife and the bra-clasp were collected, handled and/or tested in circumstances where contamination was highly likely. That's plain "confirmation" of the innocence case - no "bias" involved.

My point - in fact just as you state in your paragraph above - is that it's legitimate to test your hypothesis by focussing on relevant facts, and that's entirely different from "post-hoc rationalisation" of a conclusion already held.

The further point is that everything you criticise here - ranging from "confirmation bias" (however you understand that) through to outright lying - makes up the substance of the accusations against Amanda and Raffaele from both the official Perugia prosecution and the guilter blogosphere.

I agree with you, Antony. I think what you're describing is how to properly employ intuition, or how to 'follow a hunch' without making a damned fool out of yourself. You come up with a hypothesis, and then you especially look for the data which which will also falsify it, as well as confirm it. It is especially necessary in my mind to put confirming data in context, to try to ensure you're not relying on exceptions rather than the rule.

As an example, after doing some research on this debate and some of the participants, then trying to manufacture a plausible guilt scenario that actually relied on evidence and failing miserably, in the process coming to the conclusion Amanda and Raffaele were likely to be innocent, I joined this board to see if anyone had come up with rational explanations for the lack of evidence. At the time I also thought perhaps that the composition of the innocentisti faction, as well as a highly contentious debate, had cemented that position and it was possible they just weren't extending the benefit of the doubt. That unlikely scenarios were being accepted due to bias against the police and courts of Italy.

I mean, I'd read some crazy-making stuff. A top police official saying he didn't need evidence, he could just tell by observing behavior of someone from an unfamiliar culture they were guilty? That they'd mount a picture of a suspect on a wall with convicts almost a year before she'd been charged? That they'd parade through town in an ostentatious display and announce 'case closed' before they'd even gotten the forensic report? That almost had to be something out of context--the clip I'd originally seen was just the thirty-second one--because if that was true, think of what else must probably be true...

Thus I formulated the hypothesis that perhaps the supporters of Raffaele and Amanda were a little bit out of line, and a more plausible explanation was mistakes due to misunderstandings and confirmation bias, with perhaps a little naughtiness, but nothing all that blatant. I decided to see if the participants of the debate could prove me mistaken. I remember someone ( )welcomed me to the board telling me they liked some of what I had to say but from what I'd read of the threads I also thought he was a real nice guy. Thus I just bit my tongue, besides I still held open the possibility he was right, I just thought it less likely at that time--much less likely actually--but still within the realm of possibility.

I remember my shock when I found out that Giobbi clip wasn't a cherry-picked out of context bit, that the ten car screaming siren flashing light victory lap actually happened. It came from what I considered a highly reputable poster who seemed surprised I didn't know it was true. That in part was because when he'd brought it up before I hadn't yet done my research into who was who, and was just enjoying watching you all squabble whilst reading the threads. Thus I hadn't associated the information with a reliable source, not paying much attention to posters names at that time.

Those are just the extreme examples, much of the rest of my failed hypothesis lies in shambles as well. I've gone out there and looked for, using the same methods, for what 'also should be true if this is true' namely that there's a lack of oversight of the police by the press, the courts, and that the government also considers it a concern. It's kinda shocking to be honest, but so is eight extremely iffy charges on journalists on one case, an utterly dysfunctional legal system, and the president of what's considered a center-right party mentioning a 'police state' during election just to mention some confirming data.

However, imagine some people sometimes do things differently. They see something they think 'suspicious' and then look for more 'suspicion' and find what they're looking for. They don't bother to do any research to falsify their hypothesis, for example just entering a poster's name and 'cartwheels' into a search engine, or going back to their first posts and see if they display knowledge of previous threads before becoming convinced of something enough to make an accusation. They might be highly intelligent yet unable to accept that not everyone does things the same way or is as prone to make confirmation bias errors in employing intuitive skills....

 

[RWVBWL]

Hi Kaosium,
I am wondering if you or anyone else might clear something up for me.
Amanda Knox had a photograph of herself on that wall, as did Rudy Guede.

But I don't recall seeing Raffaele Sollecito's photo up there. Do you?

 

[RWVBWL]

____________________

Mary,

Another thought.

The pictures were cleaned using software. That's not how Meredith's face and neck were cleaned. Apparently the real fake blood, so-to-speak, "still dripping from her chin," was cleaned from Meredith on the afternoon of November 1st by taking a shower. That's the impression that Amanda conveyed in her court testimony. Since Amanda had showered earlier that day, also at the cottage, that would mean that Meredith was the last to shower before Amanda's shower on the next day, November 2nd. Meredith's fake blood, diluted, may be what Amanda tracked out of the shower prior to her bathmat boggie.

__________
A common recipe for home-made fake blood: 1/4 ketchup, 3/4 corn syrup. Corn can create a false positive reaction to Luminol.

///

Hello Fine,
You often present thought provoking posts. This is another one I believe. Even though it's been, what does PilotPadron always harp on - oh ya, the some 50,000+ postings here, new ideas about what might have happened still surface. This is the 1st time I have read anyone mention that it might have been Amanda, or Meredith herself, as Chris C noted, stepping into that washed off, diluted fake blood Meredith wore the night before. Interesting...

 

[Kaosium]

Hi Kaosium,
I am wondering if you or anyone else might clear something up for me.
Amanda Knox had a photograph of herself on that wall, as did Rudy Guede.

But I don't recall seeing Raffaele Sollecito's photo up there. Do you?

That's the way I saw it too, Amanda and Rudy but not Raffaele. I recall there were some theories way back in the archives elsewhere that suggested that was because Raffaele was initially going to cut a deal.

 

[shuttlt]

To me that clearly states: "conclusion first, evidence tailored to fit." If that isn't what you meant then please explain how.

That isn't my intended meaning. Perhaps I'm using JREF shorthand and causing confusion. A post-hoc rationalization is not a valid form of reasoning. I am observing that were you to share the guilter view of the case, you would find it much easier to accept/come up with a post-hoc rationalization of the crime.

Last weeks XKCD seems relevant http://www.xkcd.org/904/

 

[shuttlt]

Just out of interest: if that's the case, why do you use the US spelling of "rationalize/rationalise"?

Because I was taught to spell in the UK in the 80s. Also I've been exposed to too many American's and American spellcheckers. I sometime pronounce "router" as "rawter" as well. If I could consciously stop myself I would.

 

[shuttlt]

Seems to be deliberate misunderstanding of what I typed. There is nothing wrong with looking for evidence to support your instincts. This is how science works. It's when you fail to find evidence and then invent the facts you need, that it becomes confirmation bias.

I know it's been mentioned already, but this is not how science works. I could find you evidence in favor of homeopathy until the end of time. There is more than one explanation of how the scientific process is meant to work, the most often quoted one is that you are supposed to try to falsify your hypothesis.

 

[Kaosium]

Updates on the Sabrina Misseri case (murder of Sarah Scazi). Insanity. The dad (who confessed to murder) has been released because he has already served the 6 months for what he was charged with (concealing the body). The have also arrested Sabrina's mother Cosima for aiding her daughter to kidnap Sarah and conceal the body. Evidently the Mom's DNA was found mixed with Sarah's (she was staying in the same house). Just crazy.

http://bari.repubblica.it/cronaca/2...n_assassino_arrestatemi-16997378/?ref=HREC1-4

http://www3.lastampa.it/cronache/sezioni/articolo/lstp/404857/

Machiavelli is fanatically convinced that she is guilty and was quite offended when others questioned that. I puzzled out as much as I could, and previous posts on this subject and what I got from it is the father killed his niece but somehow because of some bizarre 'suspicion' involving phone calls and 'lies' that they arrested the daughter and put the screws to the father and he implicated his own daughter after many hours of interrogation they then showed on TV. The mother objected and now they threw her in jail too? Something like that?

It seems like the same pattern is emerging. The Italian press was going wild over her in the news too as I recall, casting aspirations on her character for various reasons, she wasn't acting like they thought she should as I recall. There was a link from Fine that I followed months back that led to an online poll and something like 90% of respondents thought the girl was involved for some reason.

What's the DNA evidence amount to?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Misseri loves company (but with a new meaning)

What's the DNA evidence amount to?

Kaosium,

I was not able to find anything in a desultory search. If RoseMontague is correct and there are some mixed DNA samples of Sarah Scazzi and Sabrina's mother and nothing else (and if Sarah lived in that house), then the mixed DNA as evidence of a crime is a big stinking pile of woo.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

To a degree that is true, but you have to follow where the reasoning takes you to see whether or not it really is confirmation bias. I will go along with what Kevin Lowe says about this:

Take the case of the alleged "murder weapon" taken from Raffaele's kitchen drawer. If you are convinced of innocence, then this knife can't possibly really be the murder weapon, so we start to look for reasons to think that the DNA reading is from contamination. And we find that the knife was tested in an uncertified laboratory already containing the victim's DNA, by an unrecognised procedure, and that the technician carrying out the test never ran any controls for contamination. Not only that, but the knife was previously removed from the collection envelope by police and placed in a used cardboard box for no discernible reason. So there is more than one route by which it could have been contaminated, but the laboratory procedures alone make the test manifestly meaningless.

By contrast, if we are convinced of Amanda's guilt, then we need this knife to be the murder weapon, so we have to "rationalise" how that could be the case. Without any corroborating evidence, we conclude that she was carrying it around in her large bag, sheathed in the pages of the Harry Potter book. Not only that, but we find that 2 of the 3 victim's wounds do not match it, neither does it match a bloody imprint of a knife on the bedsheet - so we have to conclude that more than one knife was used.

Ideally you are not convinced either that Amanda is guilty or that Amanda is innocent. I think if you're rational you have to think that the prior probability of the Mignini three-way hypothesis is very, very low so your starting point should be that the knife is very, very unlikely to have been involved in the murder.

Then you add in the various factors already listed: the implausibility of the idea that someone would carry it around for self-defence purposes when they had no history of stabby behaviour and in any case had access to much more suitable knives if they were borrowing a knife from Raffaele for that purpose, the fact that most of the wounds are incompatible with the thing and that the one that is compatible is also compatible with every non-serrated knife of reasonable length on the planet, the fact the knife was found in the cutlery drawer and so on.

The DNA result counts as evidence that the knife was used in the murder, of course, because in the normal course of events DNA testing is right much more often than not.

We don't know what Stefanoni's lab's real error rate is because they conceal that information, and since Stefanoni's ethics are in question I'd really want to know her error rate specifically in cases where the police have staked their reputation on an incredibly unlikely theory, their evidence has collapsed, they look like fools and they desperately need a Stefanoni miracle to save face. However we could be generous and use her general error rate and Amanda's innocence is still in good shape.

Just making numbers up for illustrative purposes, if we say that the Mignini Three-Way has a likelihood of one in a billion, even if Stefanoni only makes mistakes one time in a million it's still much, much more likely that the DNA result is an error than it is that the Mignini Three-Way actually happened as he fantasised it.

Unless you're convinced Stefanoni is as bent as a wire coat-hanger the DNA result does count as evidence of their guilt. It's just not strong enough evidence to overwhelm the incredibly low prior probability of Mignini's absurd fantasy, hence it's highly likely to be an error or fraudulent.

 

[Fine]

I peeked into the girls' refrigerator looking for ingredients to make fake blood....

Noticed on the bottom shelf containers of something called "Activia." Yogart, but not your garden-variety yogurt. This one was promoted as a cure for tummy troubles. See: HERE. Was it Meredith who was having tummy troubles? Don't the digestion-time studies mentioned on this forum ---to calculate time of death---chart only the digestion-time for people without tummy troubles?


///

 

[Chris_Halkides]

pizza

. Was it Meredith who was having tummy troubles? Don't the digestion-time studies mentioned on this forum ---to calculate time of death---chart only the digestion-time for people without tummy troubles

Fine,

I know that Amanda complained of stomach problems. Therefore, it is possible, even probable, that she really would kill for a pizza....

 

[Fuji]

No, I haven't read it. I have much, much bigger fish to fry and much more important legal documents to read in the time I have available.

I told you, I'm lurking, trying to see which side is "winning" if you like. At the moment it's fairly clear.

Rolfe.

So you refuse to read the detailed reasoning of how the court reached its decision, and yet you still feel entitled to say that Knox-supporters are "winning"? How is that a reasonable position to take, given that you must be at least hazily aware that many "guilters" who have posted to this and the other Knox threads make explicit reference to Massei citations (and find implicit agreement with its overall findings) to buttress their arguments?

 

[Fuji]

Does this mean that the presence of defensive wounds is hardly inculpatory?

I assume that this is meant to be an attempt at a cute retort, but if you are seriously asking this question, I would have to say: No, I am reasonably certain that the observed presence of fresh wounds on persons of interest in a knife murder would make them more likely to be considered subsequently as suspects.

 

[Fuji]

Fuji, you are the one being ridiculous. I did the work to construct a scale model of that wall and window to find the distance one would need to step in order to make that traverse. I marked out the distance and then stepped it myself to verify that it could be done. The step is reachable from the porch and even easier from the rock outcropping part way down the slope.

Of course, to a lard bucket like Mignini it will look impossible.

I don't care what kind of scale model you made. The police immediately gave high priority to an investigation of the ground and wall underneath the window. Your assertion of a purported entry which does not involve standing on the ground underneath the window is one which was immediately discounted as unlikely by the investigators on the scene, as shown by the fact that they gave it this attention without knowing in advance what it would reveal.

 

[Fuji]

I seriously can't believe that you cannot grasp the concept that there is no way that in regard to a single criminal incident with a shared investigation, the court system will ever find that the murder was committed simultaneously by one/more-than-one attacker, and that entry was simultaneously forced/not-forced.

But why not? They have already found that Meredith was killed at both 10 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.

A disagreement over the hypothesized TOD does not represent a fundamental distinction in the separate findings of the respective courts: at every stage of the process, the courts have confirmed that the murder was not committed by a lone intruder who broke in to the cottage through Filomena's window. In Guede's instance, this finding is now final.

I stand by my original statement quoted above, and am actually somewhat taken aback that this very simple concept has to be explained so many times.

 

[Fuji]

It does not invalidate what John Douglas and the FBI do however. What they use criminal profiling for is to try to use psychology and probability based on crime statistics to get an indication of what to look for in their suspect. Then they use tried and true forensic methods to evaluate physical evidence to confirm or deny whether they are on the right track or have a case against a specific person.

Yes they do. As I have contended elsewhere, the CCM which he co-authored would incline any competent investigator to quickly place Knox under suspicion.

 

[Fuji]

There are many other examples (Bonnie & Clyde, Fred & Rose West, etc) which follow similar patterns of gradual indoctrination measured in years, not months, or weeks - or SIX DAYS. See, one of the critically important things to remember about group crimes is that there has to be an extremely high level of trust among the participants. That trust is only mutually gained by having an intensely close and intimate level of emotional bond with the other person/people in the group, and a well-established comfort with each other's moral code. It also almost always involves a gradual breaking down of moral boundaries in small increments over a long period of time, before the joint commission of the most heinous crimes becomes acceptable to all the people involved.

Nonsense.

In the case of Jerry Heimann, Jeff Grote only knew the ringleader, Barbara Opel, for FIVE DAYS.

 

[Fuji]

It's truly amazing in all the time this has been discussed, you are the first to bring up this possibility.

The answer is that there is other evidence that shows the laptop has remained connected to the Internet in the time from 21:10:32 of Nov. 1 to 5:32:08 of Nov. 2. The technical experts from the postal police assert this and it can be seen on page 328 of the Massei Report.

It's truly amazing that you point to a section of the Massei report dealing specifically with an examination of the mobile phone evidence in an attempt to assert unfounded claims relating to Sollecito's laptop.

Yes. Truly amazing.

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium,

I was not able to find anything in a desultory search. If RoseMontague is correct and there are some mixed DNA samples of Sarah Scazzi and Sabrina's mother and nothing else (and if Sarah lived in that house), then the mixed DNA as evidence of a crime is a big stinking pile of woo.

I recall something (I think) you said, way back about halfway through the last thread that during the OJ trial in addition to the excellent DNA evidence presented they also included his DNA in his own house or own walkway mixed with their blood, similar to what Rose described here and the bathroom samples in this case. I also recall trying to find information on one of Amanda's cellmates, the Moldavian woman they nicknamed 'The Black Widow' or somesuch, as I'd read something about her being convicted on prosecution appeal due to a cigarette butt with her DNA at the scene.

I was hoping to find out more as to whether that scene was the sort of place a butt of hers might have been found anyway, but something nasty got on my computer from that Moldavian site and I fled in horror. I wonder though, being as the nature of that evidence could be easily tracked there on a shoe or if she'd often been there wouldn't be unusual, if the understanding of DNA evidence in Italy today is akin to what it was in the US circa the OJ trial?

Has there been any reports of whether Italy is planning on imposing DNA standards?