Jonbennet Ramsey

[Fnord]

In Gold Prospecting it is called "Marrying the Vein." It's the point in time that the prospector ceases to look for evidence that gold is there, but rather believes that the vein is there so much that everything he sees becomes evidence that he is right. We see it a lot with CTs.

Does this qualify as a more obsessive form of "Confirmation Bias"?

 

[PhantomWolf]

Does this qualify as a more obsessive form of "Confirmation Bias"?

I'd suggest yes. However whereas with a Confirmation Bias if you see A and B then if A matches your expectations you keep it as evidence and if B doesn't, you discard it, with "Marrying the Vein" you merely twist both A and B to mean that you are right, even if they are actually contradictory. eg the classic, "No one is opposing my ideas, so I must be right," followed immediately by, "You people are just opposing me to shut me up, so I must be on to something."

 

[Fnord]

I'd suggest yes. However whereas with a Confirmation Bias if you see A and B then if A matches your expectations you keep it as evidence and if B doesn't, you discard it, with "Marrying the Vein" you merely twist both A and B to mean that you are right, even if they are actually contradictory. eg the classic, "No one is opposing my ideas, so I must be right," followed immediately by, "You people are just opposing me to shut me up, so I must be on to something."

That reads more like a segue from the "Appeal From Ignorance" to the "Galileo Fallacy".

 

[PhantomWolf]

That reads more like a segue from the "Appeal From Ignorance" to the "Galileo Fallacy".

Don't just take that as the only one, many of them exist, another classic one that shows contradictory thinking is that "The WTC Towers fell into their own footprint thus proving a Controlled Demolition," followed by "Steel beams were thrown hundreds of metres from the towers, which could only have been done by explosives, proving it was a controlled demolition." Basically the whole thing boils down to seeing evidence of your belief in everything and anything, even if it contradicts the previous evidence you have. It leads to people saying things like "The evidence needs to be viewed in isolation for you to see the big picture."

 

[Fnord]

Don't just take that as the only one, many of them exist, another classic one that shows contradictory thinking is that "The WTC Towers fell into their own footprint thus proving a Controlled Demolition," followed by "Steel beams were thrown hundreds of metres from the towers, which could only have been done by explosives, proving it was a controlled demolition." Basically the whole thing boils down to seeing evidence of your belief in everything and anything, even if it contradicts the previous evidence you have. It leads to people saying things like "The evidence needs to be viewed in isolation for you to see the big picture."

.
Sorta like when my dad would get it into his head that I was doing drugs. If I was happy, it was "Uppers". If I was quiet, it was "Downers". If I had mosquito bites, then I was shooting heroin. Laughter meant marijuana. There was no such thing as "normal" because in the absence of any obvious symptoms, then I must have been stealing his liquor.

And of course, my denials meant only that I was lying...

 

[PhantomWolf]

.
Sorta like when my dad would get it into his head that I was doing drugs. If I was happy, it was "Uppers". If I was quiet, it was "Downers". If I had mosquito bites, then I was shooting heroin. Laughter meant marijuana. There was no such thing as "normal" because in the absence of any obvious symptoms, then I must have been stealing his liquor.

And of course, my denials meant only that I was lying...

Exactly. You've got it, and therefore are clearly doing meth because it's crystal.

 

[timhau]

Good post, but what on earth's a "woman's handwriting"?

I grade a couple of hundred hand-written exams (university freshmen, mostly) every year befoe Christmas. I once did a small test: I turned about 20 of the papers upside down so I couldn't see the name on the front page, and divided them into men and women based on handwriting. All of the ones I thought were women, actually were. There were a couple of errors in the guy pile; the error rate wasn't much above 10%.

Yeah, I know. Small sample. And no, I would never want to put anyone in jail based on that. It's guesswork, pure and simple; guesswork where success rate is well above 50%, but istill guesswork.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm wondering where Skeptic Ginger is? I'd been wanting to hear her opinion of the David Southall case. Was he justified in what he did?

Rolfe.

 

[lionking]

I grade a couple of hundred hand-written exams (university freshmen, mostly) every year befoe Christmas. I once did a small test: I turned about 20 of the papers upside down so I couldn't see the name on the front page, and divided them into men and women based on handwriting. All of the ones I thought were women, actually were. There were a couple of errors in the guy pile; the error rate wasn't much above 10%.

Yeah, I know. Small sample. And no, I would never want to put anyone in jail based on that. It's guesswork, pure and simple; guesswork where success rate is well above 50%, but istill guesswork.

Probably a subject for another thread, but how can women's and men's handwriting be distinguished?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Probably a subject for another thread, but how can women's and men's handwriting be distinguished?

Some scholars have taken a more scientific approach to discerning individual differences in recent years (Beech 2005, Burr 2002). Generally speaking, most studies have shown better than chance success at guessing the gender of a writer by handwriting, with the average success rate at about two out of three.

http://www.tsroadmap.com/physical/handwriting/

http://www.tsroadmap.com/physical/handwriting/handwriting-links.html

 

[timhau]

Come to think of it, given the course, if had said they're all women, I would've probably gotten two out of three correct. I could then have picked out the ones that look sloppy and said they're all guys, and my success rate would have improved.

 

[lionking]

I've yet to see a court case decided on the basis of "they looked guilty". Body language assessment is terribly over-rated.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Wow, you base your assessment on incorrect evidence and when that is pointed out you come out with.....

Nothing that has been posted here makes me question my assessment of the Ramsey case.

You're sounding a little like the 9/11 "skeptics" there.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wow, you base your assessment on incorrect evidence and when that is pointed out you come out with.....



You're sounding a little like the 9/11 "skeptics" there.

Well let's examine that claim.

Because lie detector tests have been discredited, you dismiss the health care professions' skill in assessing certain behaviors that need to be assessed in patient interviews. Because Quirkology tests a few untrained people who fail to detect lies, you treat that as if it were as extensive as the Framingham study or a Cochrane review. Because someone posts a single anecdote about a medical professional who made a bad call, that is now credible evidence that incriminates the entire medical profession. As if all providers have the same skills.

Here's the typical discrediting arguments:

decades of research indicate that there are few reliable, nonverbal cues of deception. And when you think about, this makes sense. Most lying occurs with little effort, thought or planning. Lying comes very naturally and, for the most part, people are good at it. In fact, people tell the same lies so often that they even begin to believe their own lies. So, while we think that lying is difficult and stressful, this is not typically the case. It is very common for people to lie with little anxiety or nervousness.

And ironically sometimes telling the truth can be very stressful. In other words, not only is it possible for people to look "calm" when lying, but people often look "deceptive" when telling the truth.

Taking this into consideration, it should come as no surprise that every study shows that people are very poor lie detectors. Even trained professionals have a difficult time detecting deception. Only a few people can detect deception better than the odds of flipping a coin.

So in one breath they claim there are no reliable deception indicators while in the second they note some people actually are better than chance at detecting deceit. Well which is it? Are there no cues and the people who are good at it psychic? Or are they good at it because they actually are looking at reliable cues?

Here's another typical argument discrediting the skill:

The conclusions from this research are obvious -- trained professionals and untrained laypeople, in general, cannot tell when a person is lying. If you've known someone for years (a best friend, a family member, a significant other), your chances for detecting truthfulness is likely higher (since you have become accustomed to the signs of lying in the other person over the years). Strangers, however, trying to guess truthfulness in other strangers will do no better than chance in their accuracy.

In this article the author reviews a few studies of professionals who either think they are good at lie detecting or who should be good at it, and the research results find the opposite. But then the reviewer also noted:

Wallace then goes on to explain that indeed, there are some people who can reliably detect deceit in others, and most successful poker players are usually such people. But most people are not professional, successful poker players.

So are these poker players reading minds, or are there actually cues there which reveal deceit? If there are no real cues how do you explain what the poker players are reading?

It is not about looking down, or looking suspicious or avoiding eye contact. But there is one reliable cue and that has been described as a "micro expression" by Frank and Ekman who've researched and written about the using these brief emotional slips which don't match the circumstances of the conversation when most people are being deceitful.

You cannot use this technique for every type of deception and some people are better liars than others, so every deception cannot be reliably read. But when a person is being deceitful about something as significant as the death of a child, they are more likely to reveal the emotion they are trying to be deceitful about.


Now if you have some studies which discredit Ekman, I'd be interested, however, he's demonstrated his skill and technique many times in public interviews.


As for the evidence I've supposedly not addressed, you can find extensive arguments about the case to support both guilt and innocence so no single piece of evidence convicts or exonerates the Ramseys. It's the totality of the evidence I've drawn my conclusion on. I don't expect anyone else to take my word for it or draw the same conclusion. But my opinion in this case is not baseless regardless of other people coming to other conclusions.

 

[lionking]

Have you interviewed the Ramseys?

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

But there is one reliable cue and that has been described as a "micro expression" by Frank and Ekman who've researched and written about the using these brief emotional slips which don't match the circumstances of the conversation when most people are being deceitful.

You cannot use this technique for every type of deception and some people are better liars than others, so every deception cannot be reliably read. But when a person is being deceitful about something as significant as the death of a child, they are more likely to reveal the emotion they are trying to be deceitful about.

Except micro-expressions only tell you that someone is concealing an emotion, not why. Ekman himself gave an interview last year in which he uses a very Ramsey-like case as an example of how micro-expressions do not tell you guilt or innocence. It wouldn't be shocking that parents who have had a child murdered, and have been besieged with accusations, would be trying to conceal emotions in public. That doesn't remotely mean they are lying about killing their daughter.

As for the evidence I've supposedly not addressed, you can find extensive arguments about the case to support both guilt and innocence so no single piece of evidence convicts or exonerates the Ramseys. It's the totality of the evidence I've drawn my conclusion on. I don't expect anyone else to take my word for it or draw the same conclusion. But my opinion in this case is not baseless regardless of other people coming to other conclusions.

It's not evidence you've "supposedly not addressed," it's things you've cited that have been pointed out to you are factually wrong and you have not acknowledged or addressed. Pointing us to an entire website about the case doesn't change that.

 

[Rolfe]

You need to let this go. Skeptic girl has no training in Genetics and the decent thing to do would be to explain why this couldn't be what it appears to be and then move on.

Mmm. It was explained why it couldn't be what the newspapers were hinting it was, very early on in the thread. And then again, several times. All of this before the posts tCS is laughing-dog at.

I don't see any problem with someone posting on an internet forum that they think the Ramseys looked guilty. It's standard chit-chat. On a forum like this, however, I expect the poster to have a realistic view of how much weight can be placed on that opinion (not a lot, frankly, for all the reasons stated), and to temper this opinion with an assessment of the factual evidence.

I'm not seeing that here. The Southall case is a classic cautionary tale of what happens when somone has far too great a faith in their own ability to read body language in this way. It's not just "a professional who made a bad call", it's what happened in pretty much the only case we know about when a professional was sufficiently confident of his abilities in this respect to actually act on them. Professor Southall, paediatrician and expert in child abuse cases, "made a bad call". Of course Skeptic Ginger, nurse-practitioner, can't possibly be wrong though!

I'm no expert in this case, but the evidence as summarised by others seems to indicate the father as a very improbable suspect. And for me, that trumps "he looked guilty" every time.

Rolfe.

 

[Fnord]

What "Guilt Profiling" relies upon most are impressions, feelings and beliefs. These beliefs, in turn, seem to be based more on Confirmation Bias than on any vetted scientific enquiry. "Guilt Profiling" then is little more that "Faith-Based Forensics".

What other belief systems rely heavily or solely on faith to assert their particular "truths"?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Except micro-expressions only tell you that someone is concealing an emotion, not why. Ekman himself gave an interview last year in which he uses a very Ramsey-like case as an example of how micro-expressions do not tell you guilt or innocence. It wouldn't be shocking that parents who have had a child murdered, and have been besieged with accusations, would be trying to conceal emotions in public. That doesn't remotely mean they are lying about killing their daughter.

Once again, I am talking about the totality of the evidence and the interviews, of which there were many. Ekman is right to say one cannot rely on a single micro-emotion or use just the interview. I've not done that in this case.

I get it that other people remain unconvinced. I get it they don't think much of my personal assessment. So what? It says to me these folks may not have the same background in assessing family dynamics as I do.

The immediate dismissal of the ability to detect deceit from non-verbal cues is the unskeptical position here. I've studied Ekman's techniques and while I don't claim to be an expert, I've recognized the micro-emotions he is talking about. And just as he notes in the article you quoted, once you see them, you can begin recognizing them. They come into focus, so to speak.

These micro-emotion facial expressions are not the equivalent of taking one's pulse, or claiming people lying look down or whatever. Unlike the latter, Ekman's observations have been consistently supported by the research.

It's not evidence you've "supposedly not addressed," it's things you've cited that have been pointed out to you are factually wrong and you have not acknowledged or addressed. Pointing us to an entire website about the case doesn't change that.

Basically you are saying something is factually wrong because you've concluded it is, not because you have a monopoly on reality. Just about every "fact" in this case has more than one interpretation.

The posts in the thread are so full of personal attacks I put a few people on ignore. Maybe the "fact" you speak of is something I didn't read. The people in this forum more and more often can't seem to disagree with people without belittling them. I've done the same with some posters and I'm not claiming personal perfection here. But really, why read posts where people are more interested in belittling people than actually discussing their different opinion or point of view?


Clearly I'm an evidence based reality person. Maybe you or other people don't like my interpretation of some evidence. But the attacks in this thread are as ironic as it gets.

Here's a science (detecting deception) with a lot of clutter. Rather than looking through the clutter to find that actual bits of truth in there, we have supposed open minded skeptics in this thread dismissing everything out of hand simply because they've learned that lie detectors are woo. That's like dismissing TENS units for pain because one learned acupuncture research was mostly bunk.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Have you interviewed the Ramseys?

The Ramseys were interviewed a dozen times or more on TV and news programs. There are hours of tapes of them. I saw quite a bit of the interviews at the time the case was in the news.