Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

publication list

It is also a fact that she [Vecchiotti} has no relevant international publications...

Machiavelli,

I showed that your claim was false, just by doing a Medline search, and I posted the results here.

 

[Draca]

The striking answer in this poll is the miserable 11% who express a belief in innocence;

translation:

What do you think about Amanda Knox’s and Raffaele Sollecito’s acquittal?

I think they are guilty but there was not sufficient proof to convict them 33%
It is the umpteenth case of injustice in Italy 22%
I am against, they are two murderers walking 18%
The pressure of media weighted on the decision, especially of US media 16%
I agree, I always thought they were innocent 11%

as you see:
the correct translation does not really say “from the beginning”;
the questions about their guilt were in fact three: I think they are innocent (I agree), I think they are guilty (I disagree), and I think they are guilty but there is not sufficient proof to convict (out on technicality, respects the decision but believes their guilt);

I read 'from the beginning' and 'I always thought they were innocent' as the same thing.

This was a very poor question imo. It would have been better to make the option - I agree, they are innocent. By adding 'from the beginning' or 'I always thought they were innocent' it denies this choice to those who thought they were guilty and have since changed their minds. With the smear campaign that went against the defendents I think in Italy especially it is likely that most Italians first thought they were guilty.

 

[Skind]

The striking answer in this poll is the miserable 11% who express a belief in innocence

It's a loaded option. You either must have thought them innocent all the way through, or you're forced to take one of the other options. There is no option for someone who thought they were guilty but now thinks they are innocent.

This is clearly unbalanced as there is no such contraint on the 'guilty' selections.

In addition, one can believe them to be innocent AND that there was media pressure on the decision, even though Italian juries were supposedly immune to media pressure in the first trial, they magically and spontaneously acquired the ability to be affected as soon as the second trial started.

Poll choices are supposed to represent the available choices. This poll clearly doesn't and it's viability must be severely questioned if we want to be seen as having any integrity.

I'm not going to comment on the potential bias of the readerbase and the self-selection of the respondents. There's a reason we have tight controls on using polls as research. This poll appears to have obeyed none of them.

I would say Umbria24 has a good case for claiming back the money it paid for the poll.

 

[Dougm]

But the media talked a lot about Stefanoni, Mignini, the police, the bra clasp, the videos, the Vecchiotti-Conti report. They said things not different from what you know. Really this result dosn't make you think about anything?

It makes me think about some things, but I still bellieve that a poll like this is irrelevent, except to the public reception that Knox would recieve if she ever returned to Italy. What it says to me is that a random person in Italy, if polled, thinks the two were probably guilty. Which does not surprise me at all.

If I had not studied this case indepth, I might think they were probably guilty too. I would probably answer "guilty, but not enough evidence to convict them". You have to drill down with this case to understand it, and people who only know the surface details (I assume most people have other interests, so have not read in detail).

For a recent example (I hate to bring this up, but here goes), the Casey Anthony case was widely reported in the media. She was acquitted, except for lying to the police. If a poll asked me what I think, I would say "I think she is guilty, but there was not enough evidence to convict." Now, do I know for sure she is guilty? Have I read about the case in detail? No, and no. And I think most people are in the same boat. The affect of that opinion is on her life when she goes out to the supermarket, but it has little affect on her actual legal case.

 

[Draca]

Maybe they can start a new site ShrewsSheep&Jackals.com

I LIKE that Grinder. Great site name.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli,

I showed that your claim was false, just by doing a Medline search, and I posted the results here.

My claim is true. I consider "relevant" in relation to the post she oppupies in La Sapienza University. If you search the h-index of Carla Vecchiotti you will discover this is below 1, she is irrelevant in the scientific community. To be compared to Giuseppe Novelli for example, who has 360 international pubications, while formally has the same rank of Vecchiotti in Tor Vergata University.
However the claim that I was making about Vecchiotti was slightly different: I was saying not just that she is not relevant in the scientific community, but that she is connected to Tagliabracci and Pascali, and on several grounds I claim that she is not impartial in this case, and she appears so at first sight.
I will write in response to your previous post.

 

[Skind]

But the media talked a lot about Stefanoni, Mignini, the police, the bra clasp, the videos, the Vecchiotti-Conti report. They said things not different from what you know.

I don't know what media you saw, but the media I saw talked about a hell of a lot that turned out either to be complete conjecture, or factually false.

I no way, shape or form was what was in the bulk of the media an accurate representation of the actual facts of the case.

Only once the acquital was under way and the V-C report came out did the media in general tow a line that even questioned the prosecution line.

 

[Dougm]

This is from the beginning a biased concept of injustice

I don't see it as biased, I see it as starting with the presumption of innocence, which is what should have been done with the defendants in this case. It is true, an "injustice" is when justice is not served, and could be either the wrong person being convicted, or the guilty person going getting acquitted. But if you asked the average person on the street in the US (should we take a poll? ), does an "injustice" mean that a person is found innocent that is guilty, or a person is found guilty that is innocent, my guess is that you would get a strong majority saying the latter.

Of course, that doesn't mean anything about a poll in Italy, but it explains why people would think that question, as stated in the thread, would mean that the verdict was right, and that the injustice was the trial itself.

 

[Skind]

My claim is true. I consider "relevant" in relation to the post she oppupies in La Sapienza University.

Sorry, but you don't get to change your claim once it's shown to be false.

She has relevant publications and has been demonstrated as such.

That you wish to claim that you meant a highly specific 'relevance' is not convincing.

You will provide direct quotes that indicate you were using this highly specific definition of relevance prior to halides1 list, or you will retract your dubious claim and admit that you were clearly and fundamentally in error.

In addition, 'relevant to her post' is not relevant to the discussion. We are trying to find out if her experience is 'relevant to the V-C report', which it clearly is.

If you wish to tlak about the relevance of her experience to a unrelated issue, you may do so, but no one is under any obligation to follow your clear attempt at a strawman arguement.

 

[Machiavelli]

I read 'from the beginning' and 'I always thought they were innocent' as the same thing.

This was a very poor question imo. It would have been better to make the option - I agree, they are innocent. By adding 'from the beginning' or 'I always thought they were innocent' it denies this choice to those who thought they were guilty and have since changed their minds. With the smear campaign that went against the defendents I think in Italy especially it is likely that most Italians first thought they were guilty.

The answer is actually made of two parts:
"I agree. I have always thought they were innocent".

So the second part is a redundancy that there to help the reader to understand taht the point of the aswer is the belief of innocence.
I think everybody understandst that the main aspect of the answer is agreement with Hellman's decision. This is the only answer that expresses an agreement with Hellmann's decision, thus everyone who wants to express this ageement, you included, would have chosen this option.

However there is no point in no interest about how professional the poll is: the interesting value is the extremely low number of people expressing agreement. This is the interesting datum, it'ts pointless to dribble around it: this is the information useful to you if you are interested in understanding, in thinking about the reasons.

You may try to make a list with a number of different hypothesys for why you think people think so differently from you. Some of these explanations would be wrong, others would be right, you might be interested in verify them. Do Italian people have an average different perception than yours about the case? What are those differences?
Do you think the prosecutors in this case acted correctly? Do you think anyone with a knowledge of a case would conclude the police and prosecutors were corrupted or did a bad job? Why do you think Hellmann decared there was "no mistake on the side of the prosecution" (or you believe LJ's nonsense rationalization on the point)?
It's just material to think, to test your beliefs about reality.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

SNPs versus STRs

My claim is true. I consider "relevant" in relation to the post she oppupies in La Sapienza University. If you search the h-index of Carla Vecchiotti you will discover this is below 1, she is irrelevant in the scientific community. To be compared to Giuseppe Novelli for example, who has 360 international pubications, while formally has the same rank of Vecchiotti in Tor Vergata University.
However the claim that I was making about Vecchiotti was slightly different: I was saying not just that she is not relevant in the scientific community, but that she is connected to Tagliabracci and Pascali, and on several grounds I claim that she is not impartial in this case, and she appears so at first sight.
I will write in response to your previous post.

Machiavelli,

Among other problems, you are ignoring that most of Dr. Novelli's publications are in medical genetics. The few articles he has in the area of forensics are mostly in the area of single nucleotide polymorphisms, which are not the same as the short tandem repeats most commonly used today in DNA profiling. From what I have heard, Dr. Novelii's testimony conflicted with the review article he coauthored with respect to low template number DNA profiling.

 

[Machiavelli]

post deleted

 

[smkovalinksy]

Cosa pensi dell'assoluzione di Amanda Knox e Raffaele Sollecito?

Penso che siano colpevoli ma non c'erano le prove sufficienti per condannarli (33%, 62 Voti)
* L'ennesimo esempio di malagiustizia in Italia (22%, 41 Voti)
* Sono contrario, due assassini in libertà (18%, 35 Voti)
* Sull'assoluzione ha pesato la pressione dei media specialmente Usa (16%, 31 Voti)
* Sono d'accordo, ho sempre pensato che fossero innocenti (11%, 21 Voti)

translation:

What do you think about Amanda Knox’s and Raffaele Sollecito’s acquittal?

I think they are guilty but there was not sufficient proof to convict them 33%
It is the umpteenth case of injustice in Italy 22%
I am against, they are two murderers walking 18%
The pressure of media weighted on the decision, especially of US media 16%
I agree, I always thought they were innocent 11%


as you see:
the correct translation does not really say “from the beginning”;
the questions about their guilt were in fact three: I think they are innocent (I agree), I think they are guilty (I disagree), and I think they are guilty but there is not sufficient proof to convict (out on technicality, respects the decision but believes their guilt);
the other two questions are instead not questions about the suspects, but leave aside the question of guilt and are rather about the system, how fair the trial was or why they were acquitted: both question addresses cause of corruption or unfairness of the system/trial; a number of voters say there is a corruption or malfunction within the system since it often produces those verdicts, a number says there was a role by the US media in the decision;
the number of questions might be biased in respect to the defendants, it is a poll rather oriented to highlight opinions about the trial, but the percentage who states they agree with the verdict is anyway very low;
the percentage of people who explicitly state a belief in their guilt is at least 51%
a high percentage (16 + 22 %) does not explicitly state a belief in guilt, but anyway addresses concerns that the decision was unfair for some reason; it is reasonable to think that most this voters mean Hellmann’s decision, since the question was “what do you think about the acquittal” not “what do you think about the case” , so at least part (the majority) of this 38% voters should be considered “guilters” too (maybe in the same ration of the rest).

I recall that previous polls always gave results in line with these figures (75%- 80% of voters always believed in guilt).

One has to be careful about giving too much credence to public opinion polls. There are always issues of fixed error, sampling errors, and the like. These types of polls were forthcoming prior to the acquittals, and had no effect on the verdicts. Judge Hellman's ruling is what had the main impact on the defendants, and not surveys and opinion polls.

Also, sometimes minority opinion is the correct one. Numbers do not always indicate possession of truth.

 

[LondonJohn]

But it doesn't matter, because I guarantee you that, if a random one of the 200 people was quizzed on case details, they would have little knowledge, or have many of them wrong. Because the general public is operating on what they hear and read in the media. So their response if based on a general public opinion, which is really not relevent to much at all. Unless Amanda wanted to run for office or something.

Oh it's far worse in this particular instance. This is not a randomised group of people being surveyed. It's 200-odd self-selecting respondents. The entire premise of this poll (and nearly every newspaper phone/online poll of this type) is fundamentally and fatally flawed due to this rather obvious factor.

And out of all the meaningless newspaper online polls, this one is particularly risible. The options are quite clearly slanted against a believe that acquittals were the correct verdict (both ethically and legally). But regardless of that other blindingly obvious factor, it wouldn't have mattered if a poll of this type returned a response of 90% belief in total innocence or 90% belief in guilt: the results are meaningless rubbish and don't warrant any serious discussion here.

Incidentally, even under the proper research conditions of a randomised representative sample and a properly-worded survey, the results would only be of very limited interest. All that such a proper survey would do would be to gauge public feeling about the case. But since the general public are rarely well-educated or well-informed about a particular issue such as this, the results would give no real insight into the absolute validity of the acquittals.

As a small aside related to the previous paragraph, there was a clear indicator of the ignorance of the wider public in the last two UK general elections. For decades between 1950 and 2000, there was clear water between the two main political parties in the UK, but as both parties have moved strongly to the ideological centre ground, there is now a distinct blurring of policies. Yet most voters in the UK have strong, deep-set ideas on which party to vote for - even if the opposite party actually better represents their interests and aims. And detailed polling in the last two elections showed conclusively that this was exactly what was going on for a frighteningly large proportion of the electorate. It's one of the reasons why electoral democracy may not be the universal and inarguable panacea of self-government that most western nations like to think (and foist it on other "third-world" nations in the process). It might in fact be the least-bad system of government, but it's very far from perfect.

 

[LondonJohn]

Machiavelli,

I showed that your claim was false, just by doing a Medline search, and I posted the results here.

Oh, that was conveniently ignored

Not only that, I seem to recall that it was picked up and repeated as "fact" on .org or .net. And that reminds me of the "Amanda Knox dressed as burglar for Halloween party" story, which was quite clearly not the case (Knox was very evidently not dressed as a burglar), yet was picked up, amplified and repeated by those who were a) stupid and b) biased against Knox, in order for them to be able to roundly condemn Knox once again. It was a classic illustration of the stupidity and bias of certain prominent pro-guilt commentators, and was very interesting indeed to observe. Shakespeare would have been so very proud. As would Meredith........

 

[Machiavelli]

One has to be careful about giving too much credence to public opinion polls. There are always issues of fixed error, sampling errors, and the like. These types of polls were forthcoming prior to the acquittals, and had no effect on the verdicts. Judge Hellman's ruling is what had the main impact on the defendants, and not surveys and opinion polls.

Also, sometimes minority opinion is the correct one. Numbers do not always indicate possession of truth.

I am obviously not talking about impact on the defendants.
I am talking about, how would you explain this predominant opinion. The explanation; the peoples' veiw about facts, and the reasons behind it.
Because of my background I am interested in observing different perception of things in another culture/ community. That makes me curious about the reason, because the reason might be not that obvious.

 

[Dougm]

Oh it's far worse in this particular instance. This is not a randomised group of people being surveyed. It's 200-odd self-selecting respondents. The entire premise of this poll (and nearly every newspaper phone/online poll of this type) is fundamentally and fatally flawed due to this rather obvious factor.

And out of all the meaningless newspaper online polls, this one is particularly risible. The options are quite clearly slanted against a believe that acquittals were the correct verdict (both ethically and legally). But regardless of that other blindingly obvious factor, it wouldn't have mattered if a poll of this type returned a response of 90% belief in total innocence or 90% belief in guilt: the results are meaningless rubbish and don't warrant any serious discussion here.

Incidentally, even under the proper research conditions of a randomised representative sample and a properly-worded survey, the results would only be of very limited interest. All that such a proper survey would do would be to gauge public feeling about the case. But since the general public are rarely well-educated or well-informed about a particular issue such as this, the results would give no real insight into the absolute validity of the acquittals.

As a small aside related to the previous paragraph, there was a clear indicator of the ignorance of the wider public in the last two UK general elections. For decades between 1950 and 2000, there was clear water between the two main political parties in the UK, but as both parties have moved strongly to the ideological centre ground, there is now a distinct blurring of policies. Yet most voters in the UK have strong, deep-set ideas on which party to vote for - even if the opposite party actually better represents their interests and aims. And detailed polling in the last two elections showed conclusively that this was exactly what was going on for a frighteningly large proportion of the electorate. It's one of the reasons why electoral democracy may not be the universal and inarguable panacea of self-government that most western nations like to think (and foist it on other "third-world" nations in the process). It might in fact be the least-bad system of government, but it's very far from perfect.

Your post went into more detail about my own point of view about the poll -- to even call it research is a misnomer. But I decided not to spend any time on the methodology of the poll, because, as you stated, the results are meaningless, even if it was done using valid research techniques.

In short, the poll is meaningless. The only poll that matters was the one that the jury took of themselves.

 

[Machiavelli]

Oh, that was conveniently ignored

...

Oh no, it was not ignored. It is just not answered yet.

 

[Dougm]

I am obviously not talking about impact on the defendants.
I am talking about, how would you explain this predominant opinion. The explanation; the peoples' veiw about facts, and the reasons behind it.
Because of my background I am interested in observing different perception of things in another culture/ community. That makes me curious about the reason, because the reason might be not that obvious.

I would think your premise might be interesting if we had two groups from two different cultures/communities, given the same information, then asking them what thier perceptions are. We don't have those conditions in this case, so it really doesn't allow for any valid conclusions to be drawn.

 

[smkovalinksy]

I am obviously not talking about impact on the defendants.
I am talking about, how would you explain this predominant opinion. The explanation; the peoples' veiw about facts, and the reasons behind it.
Because of my background I am interested in observing different perception of things in another culture/ community. That makes me curious about the reason, because the reason might be not that obvious.

So do the Italian people consequently believe Hellman is incredibly stupid, or corrupt, or both? What steps will they take to bring him to justice? What if his Motivation is respected and upheld by the Supreme Court? What will their thinking be then?