Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[MDDVS]

How can it be "wrong" to "endorse" a theory?

His evidence contradicted one theory and supported another. It may not have fully contradicted Tycho's theory, but the heliocentric theory was consistent with the differences in orbital motion observed versus the "fixed" stars for the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) compared to the outer planets (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Tycho's model was not supported by those observed differences in orbital motion.

Hello Numbers, I don't wish to derail the thread further witht his Gallileo discussion. I just want to point out that Tycho's model and other similar ones were entirely consistent with all known observational facts and were the preferred models by astronomers during the 17th century. I suggest a quick look at the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

 

[MDDVS]

False.

F A L S E.

Science dies NOT point to these stains being any substance other than blood.

(if you think otherwise, point out one alternative substance indicated by science).

http://www.rsc.org/images/chemiluminescence_tcm18-188811.pdf

 

[Samson]

False.

F A L S E.

Science dies NOT point to these stains being any substance other than blood.

(if you think otherwise, point out one alternative substance indicated by science).

Machiavelli, the crime scene began at 9pm, and finished 24 plus hours later. How do you determine whose feet left what secondary traces? All footprint evidence is composed of everything before and after the crime till the scene was sealed. There is much better evidence to be concerned with, particularly the certainty that Meredith died at 9pm. You move her meal earlier to suggest the bell curve becomes asymptotic, I move it later to ensure the multiplying of probabilities that she might be murdered, and that she might be anormal digestively on the same evening does not totally confound statistical probability.

 

[anglolawyer]

If there is enough other valid evidence.... In the case LJ shows, the floor of the garage may have been cleaned with a substance that activated luminol. May be what was cleaned was one or more oil spills, not blood.

My bath tub may be positive for luminol, although from cleanser chemical residue perhaps not fully rinsed away (although I try to be thorough), not from chopping up anyone.

So that is the point.

I thought it was a living room rather than a garage. Luminol may not be the best example for the point I am making because it's evidence that can be firmed up but let's try anyway. Suppose someone has disappeared, last seen entering a particular house on a particular date. A lot of suspicious activity has been noted, including extensive and uncharacteristic cleaning of the house and, let's say, a car. All kinds of things point to the person having been murdered after entering the house. A luminol test reveals a large blotch on the living room floor, about the size of a body but, unfortunately, TMB and other tests are negative. Do you say that evidence is completely worthless?

 

[Machiavelli]

For "North Korea" one may substitute the names of any of several Council of Europe states, such as Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and some to the states once belonging to the Communist bloc. Not all the CoE states have the same level of adherence to the Convention in practice. There are a number of CoE states with better human rights records than Italy, including the several northern European states and Germany. Perhaps even the UK, when its not messing up its procedures in dealing with presumed IRA or other terrorists.

But there are also states with worse records in Western Europe, such as Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Malta, or Greece, and states with equivalent records (some years slightly worse some years slightly better) like France. Now comparatively to its population, even Finland has an equivalent record (but in fact compared to the number of proceedings, Finland's record is higher).
Yes, the Italian record doesn't have anything monstrous if compared to the average European states over the last decade, not even among states of the non-communist bloc. Although I smile when someone calls Slovenia an " Eastern state", since Slovenia is place that you can reach in minutes walking from some Italian cities, I mean if you are in Gorizia you may cross the road to go to the train station and a plate on the building says you are in Slovenia, or you walk across a square and a line painted on the pavement suggests you are entering another state.
The point is there isn't that big, outstanding difference among standards and systems.
Italy's record is currently mediocre, but not distant from others and not worse than others, not out of scale with the average.

 

[LondonJohn]

I disagree with the highlighted part and don't think your illustration is actually all that apt. A crummy piece of evidence can be firmed up by another so that they both gain weight from each other. The combinative process itself not only strengthens the inference you want to draw from the evidence (that it's a dog) but can also shore up the individual elements. A bad example, until I think of a better one, is the ID evidence against Barry George (I saw a man in a dark coat a year ago was about the sum total of it) which wasn't even third rate but which the Court of Appeal combined with other crap when turning down his first appeal.

Maybe a better analogy is a jigsaw puzzle. I might have a piece that is entirely blue. It could be anything: sky, sea, a wall, somebody's clothing - basically anything. But once I start to fit other pieces together and the picture begins to emerge the likelihood that it is sky (say) starts to become increasingly likely, eventually reaching certainty when I finally see where the piece fits.

Further, I might have ten puzzles with all the pieces jumbled into a great heap and thus not able to say whether a particular piece belongs to the one puzzle of interest to me (the steam locomotive!). If I first had to prove that a particular piece belonged to that puzzle I would never be able to complete it.

Actually I think we are both communicating the same idea. The point is that a "crummy" piece of evidence (by your description) actually means a piece of evidence that has a very wide range of inferences/interpretations. If many such pieces of evidence share one - and only one - common inference, then all of them taken together can be very strong.

However, a "crummy" piece of evidence cannot mean a piece of evidence that is inherently unreliable or unproven as to what it is (as opposed to what one might be able to infer from it). In your jigsaw analogy, the first piece you have in your hand has to be reliably a) a jigsaw piece, and b) blue in colour. As you say, one can then draw several possible inferences from that, and as more pieces of reliable evidence are added (more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle), one can narrow things down to the one correct inference.

However, let's suppose that the first piece had been scribbled all over with a felt tip pen by an annoying toddler, such that its true underlying colour was highly obscured. It might not therefore be able to be reliably identified as a blue-coloured piece - it might even be misidentified as a (say) grey piece. Clearly in such a scenario, we are hamstrung before we even start to try adding other pieces of evidence, since we cannot be confident about the reliability of the first piece. Furthermore, if the entire jigsaw had been scribbled over by this manic toddler, we would clearly have difficulty in putting any of the jigsaw together in its correct configuration.

And interestingly, that's a pretty good analogy (in my opinion) for the way in which the circumstantial evidence has been misrepresented by the various courts in our case. What they have is several pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that have been scribbled all over, plus a couple that haven't been, and they've assembled them together to create what they claim is an accurate and coherent picture. But at the same time there are a couple of other pieces left over that are very clear (e.g. the negative TMB tests) that clearly do not - and cannot - fit into what they claim is the finished jigsaw puzzle; but instead of realising that they cannot therefore have assembled the jigsaw correctly, they simply toss the inconvenient extra parts back into the box and pretend they never existed......

 

[Diocletus]

I thought it was a living room rather than a garage. Luminol may not be the best example for the point I am making because it's evidence that can be firmed up but let's try anyway. Suppose someone has disappeared, last seen entering a particular house on a particular date. A lot of suspicious activity has been noted, including extensive and uncharacteristic cleaning of the house and, let's say, a car. All kinds of things point to the person having been murdered after entering the house. A luminol test reveals a large blotch on the living room floor, about the size of a body but, unfortunately, TMB and other tests are negative. Do you say that evidence is completely worthless?

It depends. By "worthless" do you mean "inadmissible"? I think that the positive luminol result could certainly be used to aid the investigation, but that doesn't mean that it is admissible at trial.

Does the investigating agency have a proper protocol concerning blood stain detection that requires confirmatory tests to be done?

Were confirmatory tests done?

If confirmatory tests were done, were they negative?

Were the negative results then hidden from the defense?

Were negative DNA results obtained?

If you've gone through a proper protocol and obtained negative confirmatory tests, then the luminol shouldn't be admissible.

I guess that you are suggesting that in lieu of a proper confirmation (negative results of confirmatory tests), confirmatory evidence could be in the form of circumstantial evidence. I don't buy this, particularly in a situation where the circumstantial evidence is at odds with the objective evidence.

In the McDaniel case, one of the reasons for not admitting an unconfirmed luminol result is that it is incredibly prejudicial to use that evidence, not only because it possibly inaccurately suggests the presence of blood, but because it also necessarily suggests a clean up. Interestingly, in McDaniel, the luminol hit really was blood, but the Court applied the best test available to it based on the objective evidence--if the cops had simply followed the confirmation protocol, then they would have had their evidence. The reason for the inadmissibility of the luminol evidence was sloppy police work.

The bottom line is that there is an objective process available for confirming the validity of a luminol hit, and it is up to the police to follow that process. If they don't, or if the results of the process undermine the reliability of the luminol evidence, then it is simply too prejudicial to allow the evidence in.

Except in Italy, which, as far as we know, is the only country on earth that has ever convicted someone on the basis of luminol hits with negative confirmatory results. At least, that's the case until Machiavelli shows us that this has been done in North Korea or somewhere.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli, the crime scene began at 9pm, and finished 24 plus hours later. How do you determine whose feet left what secondary traces? All footprint evidence is composed of everything before and after the crime till the scene was sealed. There is much better evidence to be concerned with, particularly the certainty that Meredith died at 9pm. You move her meal earlier to suggest the bell curve becomes asymptotic, I move it later to ensure the multiplying of probabilities that she might be murdered, and that she might be anormal digestively on the same evening does not totally confound statistical probability.

Well, instead I consider the luminol footprint set to be excellent and powerful evidence. I think there is huge information there, I think it's serious and precise. The lack of alternative explanation is a key point to the evidence assessment, the improbability of a second alternative to explain this complex and peculiar combination of data which the luminol footprints are, is indeed valid and powerful circumstantial evidence.
On the other hand there is basically zero information in the time of death; not just because statistics that you claim are unfounded based on statistics principles, but because they don't have any alibi at all, and thus the evidence is not rime-sensitive. I'd like to add: I do not "move" the time of meal, I consider all possibilities, but I also read the testimonies and I am based on them. It's just you who "move" the time of meal trying to make the time lapse become as shorter as possible to fit statistics and theories disregarding the testimonies, but even doing so doesn't help much, it doesn't multiply probabilities so much when you have to consider that you are working from a known datum which already anyway belongs to the extreme segment.

 

[Diocletus]

Although I smile when someone calls Slovenia an " Eastern state", since Slovenia is place that you can reach in minutes walking from some Italian cities, I mean if you are in Gorizia you may cross the road to go to the train station and a plate on the building says you are in Slovenia, or you walk across a square and a line painted on the pavement suggests you are entering another state.

By eastern state, people are obviously referring to the area conquered by the Red Army during WWII and subsequently located behind the "iron curtain", which BTW almost included a big chunk of Friuli VG.

 

[anglolawyer]

It depends. By "worthless" do you mean "inadmissible"? I think that the positive luminol result could certainly be used to aid the investigation, but that doesn't mean that it is admissible at trial.

Does the investigating agency have a proper protocol concerning blood stain detection that requires confirmatory tests to be done?

Were confirmatory tests done?

If confirmatory tests were done, were they negative?

Were the negative results then hidden from the defense?

Were negative DNA results obtained?

If you've gone through a proper protocol and obtained negative confirmatory tests, then the luminol shouldn't be admissible.

I guess that you are suggesting that in lieu of a proper confirmation (negative results of confirmatory tests), confirmatory evidence could be in the form of circumstantial evidence. I don't buy this, particularly in a situation where the circumstantial evidence is at odds with the objective evidence.

In the McDaniel case, one of the reasons for not admitting an unconfirmed luminol result is that it is incredibly prejudicial to use that evidence, not only because it possibly inaccurately suggests the presence of blood, but because it also necessarily suggests a clean up. Interestingly, in McDaniel, the luminol hit really was blood, but the Court applied the best test available to it based on the objective evidence--if the cops had simply followed the confirmation protocol, then they would have had their evidence. The reason for the inadmissibility of the luminol evidence was sloppy police work.

The bottom line is that there is an objective process available for confirming the validity of a luminol hit, and it is up to the police to follow that process. If they don't, or if the results of the process undermine the reliability of the luminol evidence, then it is simply too prejudicial to allow the evidence in.

Except in Italy, which, as far as we know, is the only country on earth that has ever convicted someone on the basis of luminol hits with negative confirmatory results. At least, that's the case until Machiavelli shows us that this has been done in North Korea or somewhere.

As I said, luminol may not be the best example for the point I am making precisely because it can be firmed up in the ways you mention. I will try to think of something clearer.

 

[Machiavelli]

Highlight 1: Yes, and part of the scientific method used today

Highlight 2: No, there are contradictions between Galileo's observations and inferences and the geocentric theory. The revolution of the moons of Jupiter around the planet were of course analogous to the inferred revolution of the planets around the sun of the heliocentric theory, but analogy is not demonstration. The Jovian moons were a counter-demonstration to (or, in other words, falsification of) the geocentric theory.

ETA: Among the guilters and their analogs among the Italian judiciary, one of the clear departures from logic is the abandonment of Occam's razor.

It is not true that the Jovian moons are a contradiction to the geocentric theory, as much as they were not a contradiction to the heliocentric principle neither. They could be consistent with both, as they were in Tycho Brahe's model. The models requires a slight adjustment by introducing further hemicycles, but hemicycles were already existing in the models, while maintains the principle unchanged.
A major part of Galilei's method is based on inference from either limits or analogies, tho argument is based on analogy, not on demonstration nor on contradiction of principles.
The first contradiction of one geocentric principle was demonstrated by Foucault by showing the Coriolis force.

 

[MDDVS]

By eastern state, people are obviously referring to the area conquered by the Red Army during WWII and subsequently located behind the "iron curtain", which BTW almost included a big chunk of Friuli VG.

There's also the fact that it is a Slavic country. That argument that it is cloe to Italy is a bit moronic. I mean, I's like saying " I smile when someone calls Poland an " Eastern state", since Poland is place that you can reach in minutes walking from some Germany cities, I mean if you are in Frankfurt an der Oder you may cross the bridge and sudently your are in Slubice, Poland".

 

[platonov]

Pity but then, as you say, there it is. There is no testimony in this case which proves the lamp was already there. If there were, Massei would have referenced it and made a finding (of course it could be in the secret part of his motivation, I suppose). If you say otherwise, either post it or shut up about it

Why on earth would I want to ‘shut up’ about this lamp issue or any of the evidence?
Dan O asked the Q and I gave him a link. Simple.

The evidence was given in court and referred to in the court docs and these docs referenced in the CT thread I linked to.
Simply shouting ‘shut up’ won’t make the evidence go away after the fact.

That’s not how criminal law works.

Well not unless you have a time machine and then you still have the problem with the appeal finding.

 

[MDDVS]

It is not true that the Jovian moons are a contradiction to the geocentric theory, as much as they were not a contradiction to the heliocentric principle neither. They could be consistent with both, as they were in Tycho Brahe's model. The models requires a slight adjustment by introducing further hemicycles, but hemicycles were already existing in the models, while maintains the principle unchanged.

You mean epicycles.

 

[Numbers]

Hello Numbers, I don't wish to derail the thread further witht his Gallileo discussion. I just want to point out that Tycho's model and other similar ones were entirely consistent with all known observational facts and were the preferred models by astronomers during the 17th century. I suggest a quick look at the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

Excerpts from the Wikipedia article on Tycho; you can see Tycho, the greatest naked-eye astronomer, was a proponent of some incorrect assumptions:

Kepler tried, but was unable, to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the solar system. Tycho advocated for a system with an unmoving Earth for reasons of physics, astronomical observations of stars, and religion.

In regards to physics, Tycho held that the Earth was just too sluggish and heavy to be continuously in motion.

Tycho used basic geometry to show that, assuming a small parallax that just escaped detection, the distance to the stars in the Copernican system would have to be 700 times greater than the distance from the sun to Saturn. Moreover, the only way the stars could be so distant and still appear the sizes they do in the sky would be if even average stars were gigantic — at least as big as the orbit of the Earth, and of course vastly larger than the sun. And, Tycho said, the more prominent stars would have to be even larger still. And what if the parallax was even smaller than anyone thought, so the stars were yet more distant? Then they would all have to be even larger still. {Not really true.}
Deduce these things geometrically if you like, and you will see how many absurdities (not to mention others) accompany this assumption [of the motion of the earth] by inference.


Whether or not other scientists accepted the heliocentric theory depended in part on their religious beliefs and pressures from the Catholic church; from the Tycho Wikipedia article:

Persistence of the Tychonic system, especially in Catholic countries, has been attributed to its satisfaction of a need (relative to Catholic doctrine) for "a safe synthesis of ancient and modern". After 1670, even many Jesuit writers only thinly disguised their Copernicanism. But in Germany, Holland, and England, the Tychonic system "vanished from the literature much earlier"
_____
There is a difference in the amount of retrograde motion observable in the inner planets compared to the outer planets which is best explained (in the sense of Occam's razor) by the heliocentric model. This difference was known, but the implications may have been resisted, in Galileo's time. It was the retrograde motion, at least in part, that motivated Ptomely's epicycles.

For those interested, a review of this material is at:

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy/introduction/05.motion_planets/

Fascinating as this may be for some of us (me, for example) I agree we should drop this discussion because it is deviating from the thread topic. But let's be aware of the important scientific and logical principles involved; the logical principles are not dissimilar to those that apply to any complexity, including the investigation of murder/rape cases.

 

[Kauffer]

Interpretation of luminol

Well, instead I consider the luminol footprint set to be excellent and powerful evidence. I think there is huge information there, I think it's serious and precise. The lack of alternative explanation is a key point to the evidence assessment, the improbability of a second alternative to explain this complex and peculiar combination of data which the luminol footprints are, is indeed valid and powerful circumstantial evidence.

Could you just give me one cite (or more if you wish) revealing a bona fide forensic scientist's opinion that it is safe to rely on luminol positives as evidence of blood when you have both a negative TMB test and no confirmatory testing? Isn't the reason why we have no confirmatory test for blood because it was deemed unnecessary to carry it out in the light of the negative TMB test? Didn't Stefanoni agree (eventually) that the luminol hits were not blood?

 

[anglolawyer]

Why on earth would I want to ‘shut up’ about this lamp issue or any of the evidence?
Dan O asked the Q and I gave him a link. Simple.

The evidence was given in court and referred to in the court docs and these docs referenced in the CT thread I linked to.
Simply shouting ‘shut up’ won’t make the evidence go away after the fact.

That’s not how criminal law works.

Well not unless you have a time machine and then you still have the problem with the appeal finding.

Dear Platonov

Please post a link to these documents of yours or I will be forced to conclude you are afraid to argue this point with me.

Sincerely

Anglo

(Polite enough?)

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The over interpretation of luminol results

False.

F A L S E.

Science dies NOT point to these stains being any substance other than blood.

(if you think otherwise, point out one alternative substance indicated by science).

This is a good example of muddled thinking. A luminol-positive result means that peroxidase activity is present. It could come from blood, from peroxidase enzymes, from metal ions, or from other things. It does not point one way or the other on its own. In a 2005 article James O. Pex wrote, "Luminol does not positively identify blood. This procedure requires a confirmatory test before blood is identified. Although luminol may be more sensitive than the confirmatory tests, this does not alleviate the need for confirmation. In the absence of confirmation, it cannot be stated that blood is present." I would like to add that with the availability of HemaTrace, the lower limit of detection is so low as to alleviate any concern.

In the present case, the lack of Meredith's DNA in the majority of the luminol-positive areas along with the negative TMB results point away from the conclusion that blood is present. On the other hand, the presence of Meredith's DNA in the minority of the stains does not constitute a confirmatory test for blood. The following passage is helpful in regards to interpreting the blobs in Filomena's room: "A positive luminol reaction and a DNA profile from that area does not identify blood. It is possible that the DNA profile originated from another biological fluid such as saliva or semen in the same area." I would add that in the time since 2005 research into DNA forensics has made everyone become increasingly aware of the possibility of DNA deposition that does not involve a particular body fluid.

 

[MDDVS]

Excerpts from the Wikipedia article on Tycho; you can see Tycho, the greatest naked-eye astronomer, was a proponent of some incorrect assumptions:

Kepler tried, but was unable, to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the solar system. Tycho advocated for a system with an unmoving Earth for reasons of physics, astronomical observations of stars, and religion.

In regards to physics, Tycho held that the Earth was just too sluggish and heavy to be continuously in motion.

Tycho used basic geometry to show that, assuming a small parallax that just escaped detection, the distance to the stars in the Copernican system would have to be 700 times greater than the distance from the sun to Saturn. Moreover, the only way the stars could be so distant and still appear the sizes they do in the sky would be if even average stars were gigantic — at least as big as the orbit of the Earth, and of course vastly larger than the sun. And, Tycho said, the more prominent stars would have to be even larger still. And what if the parallax was even smaller than anyone thought, so the stars were yet more distant? Then they would all have to be even larger still.[59] Tycho said

Deduce these things geometrically if you like, and you will see how many absurdities (not to mention others) accompany this assumption [of the motion of the earth] by inference.


Whether or not other scientists accepted the heliocentric theory depended in part on their religious beliefs and pressures from the Catholic church; from the Tycho Wikipedia article:

Persistence of the Tychonic system, especially in Catholic countries, has been attributed to its satisfaction of a need (relative to Catholic doctrine) for "a safe synthesis of ancient and modern". After 1670, even many Jesuit writers only thinly disguised their Copernicanism. But in Germany, Holland, and England, the Tychonic system "vanished from the literature much earlier"
_____
There is a difference in the amount of retrograde motion observable in the inner planets compared to the outer planets which is best explained (in the sense of Occam's razor) by the heliocentric model. This difference was known, but the implications may have been resisted, in Galileo's time. It was the retrograde motion, at least in part, that motivated Ptomely's epicycles.

For those interested, a review of this material is at:

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy/introduction/05.motion_planets/

Fascinating as this may be for some of us (me, for example) I agree we should drop this discussion because it is deviating from the thread topic. But let's be aware of the important scientific and logical principles involved; the logical principles are not dissimilar to those that apply to any complexity, including the investigation of murder/rape cases.

Yes Numbers. And the proof people had that the stars were so distant was... There was no proof actually. The fact remained that the stars appered to not have parallax. Heliocentrism at the time required special pleading.

You cannot use Occam's razor to explain away observational facts. Both theories were consisten with evidence but one of them required special pleading regarding the distances to the other stars.

Also note that there were improved variants of Tycho's model which included a rotating Earth, for example.

I think that it is a mistake to judge Science in the past using knowledge that we have now but was not available at the time.

 

[Numbers]

I thought it was a living room rather than a garage. Luminol may not be the best example for the point I am making because it's evidence that can be firmed up but let's try anyway. Suppose someone has disappeared, last seen entering a particular house on a particular date. A lot of suspicious activity has been noted, including extensive and uncharacteristic cleaning of the house and, let's say, a car. All kinds of things point to the person having been murdered after entering the house. A luminol test reveals a large blotch on the living room floor, about the size of a body but, unfortunately, TMB and other tests are negative. Do you say that evidence is completely worthless?

The luminol evidence, IMO, is only suggestive. It is odd that the confirmatory test you implied has been done is negative. One therefore cannot claim the luminol test has detected blood.

A silly analogy: the moon looks bright, just like all the street lights I can see when I see the moon. I conclude that the moon is a street light. A murder has been committed, therefore every thing that seems to be suspicious or suggestive, such as a luminal positive that is shown not to be blood, is interpreted as factually probative.

The "all kinds of things point to the person being murdered..." sounds as though it is conclusive in itself.