Rolf Nelson's latest reply concerning the stomach evidence contains some points worth considering:
Here's the full story on "slippage".
It didn't happen. Standard procedure, which was followed in this case according to those who have seen the video recording of the autopsy, is to tie off the stomach, duodenum and bowel so that material cannot slip around before examining them.
The way "slippage" meme got into the story is one of the least ethical bits of Massei's work of misinformation, in my view. Ronchi, a prosecution expert
who had not seen the autopsy video stated that if Lalli (the person who did the autopsy) had not tied off Meredith's bowels properly that this could explain the lack of food in the duodenum, because that food might have been accidentally squeezed down the whole length of the small intesting to the far end.
Massei, who had seen the autopsy and knew that the bowels had indeed been tied off, adapted this statement by saying "Besides this, the alimentary remnants in the small intestine must also be considered, and thus, as hypothesised by Professor Umani Ronchi, it would be possible to think that these remnants could have been found in the duodenum either because of an imperfect apposition of the ligatures, or because of an apposition of the ligatures that took place with such manner and timing as to make it impossible to avoid a sliding of material from the duodenum to the small intestine. The fact [that the] duodenum [is] empty is not [necessarily] fully reliable".
As far as Massei is concerned as long as he can tell some fairy story such that "it would be possible to think" X, then he can assume X is true. It's an even bigger leap than his usual "it is possible, indeed probable" manoeuvre, going straight from mere conceivability to effective certainty.
Unless Meredith Kercher's last meal was Harry Houdini, significant amounts of food matter did not escape down her bowel through ligatures to hide at the far end. The hypothesis that the killer moved her body and by doing so made the food in her duodenum shoot five metres down a coiled elastic tube is also somewhat unlikely to say the least.
As far as Rolfe Nelson's ideas about the fact that "almost nobody except for Amanda Knox's defense has ever cared whether a duodenum was empty or not" that's probably because this is a very unusual and specific situation. It matters in this case only because an incompetent prosecution got the time of death terribly wrong,
and the accused have an alibi for the real time of death,
and the victim had such an unusually long t(lag) time that the time of death could be nailed down this way with some precision. It's a very unusual set of circumstances which we should not expect to be an everyday occurrence.
I also don't think very much of his "Vacant Duodenum Hypothesis" - a hypothesis like that owes the world some citations to back it up. As it is it looks strictly like wishful thinking to me. The idea that there is a minimum 10% chance that the duodenum will be empty at any given moment regardless of what you have been eating and when is not only bizarre but also presented without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
