Letby Troofers (or; How "Conspiracy Theorist!" Capes for Ad Hominem Nonsense)

According to a dwindling yet evermore vociferous number of hardcore 'Lucy Letby is Guilty' types, believing Letby may have been victim to a miscarriage of justice is a conspiracy theory.

When I think of conspiracy theories, it tends to be the mostly-a-joke ones, like pigeons are animatronic government spies and ducks are time travelling alien bastards, manipulating us into slave labour as part of their "ancient and terrible evil". They're amusing Parodies of Extremism (PoEs). 

But there are others:

For instance, the moon landing was faked and the hundreds of people involved directly kept shtum for decades, just for a smug sense of insider knowledge. Some believe the earth is flat, or that it is hollow and filled with gold,  JFK, J. Edgar Hoover, Jeffrey Epstein and Elvis.

Then others are dark, coming from horribly tortured minds. QAnon, PizzaGate, Adrenochrome, the Hampstead Satanic Abuse conspiracy or the poor, paranoid souls who believe they're 'targeted individuals', being constantly monitored and battered by weapons-grade sonic technology, radiation or other, mysterious forms of attack.

Now, widely reported is that having concerns the justice system we have in Britain may have failed on this occasion, is synonymous with all of the above.

If I were sure Letby was guilty of the seven murders and seven attempted murders she has been convicted of, I too would be frustrated and possibly offended by the surge in discourse around the validity of her trial.

However, I'm also sure seeing like-minded peeps dismiss these concerns as conspiracy theories would embarrass me.

It's nonsensical and lazy, serving only a need to feel superior. It's a cheap, cowardly ad hominem, and many, many times I've asked, what exactly is this conspiracy? An answer is never forthcoming.

Sometimes, they'll use 'Letby Truthers' (or Troofers, for the supremely conceited), a direct reference to loony-tune mentalists on the American Right, who tend to view the Cheeto-hued "grab 'em by the pussy" demagogue as our lord and saviour.

It's become tribal. Intractable, like Brexit became, with people shouting terms they likely don't understand at each other "Schengen Agreement! Bayesian analysis! National Sovereignty! Narcissistic personality disorder! Exogenous insulin can be identified by comparing the insulin to c-peptide levels, you dingus!"

I'm not, I hope is obvious, characterising all who regard Letby guilty in this way - considering it's likely most people consider her to be rightly found. That would be dumb, condescending and a generalisation I have no basis for.

No.

I will at some time address the issue I have with the hardcore 'Guilters', but for the moment, let me point out what I see as difficult during a storm of this rhetoric. 

One, if anyone were to say in the case of Andy Malkinson that DNA results which would prove entirely exculpatory were being withheld, I am sure that would be considered a conspiracy theory.

Two, if I said the police had cynically pinned this all on Letby rather than making simple, possibly emotionally-influenced errors, that would be one, too. 

Three, if I suggested police used unethical and illegal methods to extract confessions that would be seen as nut-job worthy.

But all of these things have happened, and they have happened in every police force and country of the world. They may be less common now, but they happened, and, still, this is not what I am claiming.

So, considering I'm nauseatingly un-educated, with limited time, just a tendency for micro-obsessions, here's what I think, and what does and does not make sense from my perspective.

What I do think looks likely is that, with all that was wrong at The Countess of Chester neonatal intensive care unit, a serial murderer of babies is probably an extraordinarily unlikely cause of these tragedies.

If anything is an out-there, improbable, and sensationalist, it is this woman who has never so much as incurred a speeding ticket, or has a single person unrelated to this case come forward with an anecdote of her being cruel, callous, stealing, lying or creating drama. She showed no impulsivity, promiscuity, zero hints of pathological behaviour. She has been in jail since 2018, being continuously watched and analysed and the only mental disorder she's had diagnosed is PTSD. 

It appears to me, we got here via a series of cognitive biases that push an individual along a route into increasing certainty, and trap them there, the further along they go. Like a fish hook. Like poking a closed umbrella through a hole in a fence, to see if it fits. And then, having pushed it all the way through, opening it. 

Yes, it went in smoothly enough. Yes, you can easily see how that happened. There was no force. But still, no. The fact you can't now take it back out is not proof of anything. 

Firstly, I'd like you to look at the time. What is it? 13:20? Let's say it is. 

How strange over the next few days that, if you're suggestible, everytime it's 13:20, you will notice it? Well, sometimes it's just a couple of minutes out, or 23:01, or 10:32, or 02:13 but they're the same digits: a zero, a one, a two and a three. If you have the right kind of observation pattern, it'll stick in your mind. Isn't that strange? 

Give it a week. I bet you'll notice a pattern. Even if it's another one.

And sometimes you might switch from the 24 hour clock to 12 hours, to see 14:31 as (0)2:31 pm. That's because somehow you just see it everywhere now, and your mind adapts to make it fit. Anyway, it's always those numbers. You see it everywhere. 

Every time you look at a bill, every time a number of multiple digits crosses you. The dog will need medication; before it was .2 of a milligram, three times a day for seven days. Now you see 0.2 X 3 for 1 week.

And yes it sounds spurious, but so does it sound spurious, tenuous - desperate - to complain Letby was always at the scene when she worked more hours than anyone else on the ward, and on occasion was called in to help resuscitate babies she was then blamed for hurting, founded in the fact she was recorded as present!

You'll start seeing zeroes you'd have previously omitted. It will seem strange you never noticed this before, unless of course you convince yourself that actually, you did notice it before.

If you're suggestive, that is.

Confirmation bias is an important, inbuilt cognitive feature, because we are animals and patterns are important. 

But while we keep hearing that statistics were not the basis of Lucy Letby's conviction, this seems increasingly difficult to argue when the Royal Statistical Society and numerous independent statisticians have spoken out to condemn the chart shown to the jury and media early on in her trial.

Often from the people hammering home the point that Letby was allegedly always there when a mysterious collapse or death occurred on the ward are the ones saying statistics formed no part of the trial, too. A little bit like simultaneously eating and still keeping that idiomatic cake.

It's Magic, Aye?

Dr Ravi Jayaram described the pattern between Letby and these deaths or serious 'unexplained' collapses' as like a magic eye picture. "At first, it's just a load of dots. But once you see it, you can't unsee it" he said, or thereabouts.

I couldn't think of a better description of confirmation bias. 

It's curious to me that a man of such high educational attainment would not know better. But, there was a driving force for Jayaram, I contend.

Ahead of the alleged fear of Letby being a serial killer, or incompetent, or whatever it was at first, came the grudge.

Jayaram has spoken of being angry - not at Letby per se, but, apparently, at 'the system', a claim which makes little intuitive sense to me.

This was because he had been told to apologise to Letby for bullying her.  For gossiping and dubbing her "Nurse Death" or "the angel of death" - flippant, mocking terms I'd find pretty fucking appalling if these babies or their parents were dear to me. 

This was also the order to Doctor Steven Brearey, who has repeatedly described these tiny babies - born with pneumonia due to medical negligence, hemophilia, twin-to-twin syndrome, crossed pulmonary arteries, suffering NEC, sepsis - having suffered double lung collapses due to medical incompetence, and then fitting with three drains, one being of the wrong kind, in the wrong place - near to the heart and vagus nerve, potentially causing the subsequent heart attacks - weighing less than a pound, born prematurely, one at just 25 weeks -- as 'healthy' and 'stable'.

Having been reprimanded after investigation vindicated Letby's accusations of harassment and bullying, where the man in charge of the probe accused Brearey, and 'to a lesser extent, Doctor Jayaram' of plotting against Letby, saying he was 'disgusted by their behaviour' and 'it is likely they have lied'.

Look into unconscious bias where it pertains to race or homophobia etc. This does not need a conscious effort. 

Letby was then redeployed to a desk job she hated. She must have been the first serial killer ever to have railed against her suspension, make complaints against accusers via formal means (rather than blackmail, find a way to intimidate etc) and fight to get back to the hospital where everyone knew she had been accused and would unlikely outlive the memory.

A Basement of Trolls

Collective noun; A linguistic shorthand; Single word for a collection of people or animals. 

"She was inundated by angry netizens, who grew more aggressive by the basement"

Holding the flame of justice aloft today is a clique of people with an inordinate amount of time with which to patrol the internet, particularly Reddit and X / Twitter, aggressively 'correcting' people, hurling insults and creating detailed files of several tens of thousands of words on the whole case, while still often getting pretty fundamental things wrong.

It appears to have gone beyond the case at hand, shall we say.

One such commenter to have recently given leadership to this livid clique is Christopher Snowdon, head of Lifestyle Economics at the neo-lib Institute of Economic Affairs. 

In a recent article where he asked 'is Lucy Letby Innocent' (only to immediately answer himself in the same title 'almost certainly not') his intrepid sense of journalism was laid bare in the second paragraph:

"I should say from the off that I was not present at the trial and I have not read the court transcripts. I don’t pretend to know every detail of the case and I am not going to go down a rabbit hole for the sake of a convicted child murderer. I have, however, listened to about 30 hours of reporting by two journalists who were in court every day and who produced a detailed podcast about it".

What a great attitude when you want to be taken seriously! That's right, don't waste time on examining why your opponents disagree! Just assert her guilt and mercilessly block all who dissent!

This podcast - it was the Daily Mail one. Say what you like about the Daily Mail, there are no legitimate criticisms here!

I especially enjoyed their episode where it was admitted the swipe entry data that was critical in placing Letby at the scene and in establishing the presence (or not) of other nurses, was misinterpreted by the police. Yes, they conceded, this had occurred but, 'this changes nothing'. 

The Podcast of Note

Let's have a look at that.

Because it seems to brilliantly obscure the myriad problems brought up with doctor Ravi Jayaram's claims.

The first trial: It was 3.50 am, three minutes after Joanne Williams, K's designated nurse, was said to have left to visit the maternity unit to update K's parents.

Jayaram had been on the phone, and talks of his creeping realisation Letby was around a lot of incidents. He knew the time, and decided to reassure himself.

He spoke of finding Child K alone, with alarms silenced and Letby standing over the cot, doing nothing while she desaturated (her oxygen plummeted) to dangerous levels. It was, he said, 'emblazoned on his memory'.

The retrial: Now we were informed the timings were back to front. Thus, Williams was back on the ward by three minutes by 3:50 am, where she recalls that, on the contrary, Letby had called for help and the alarm was sounding while Letby and doctor Jayaram attended.

I'd say that does change things. But I am, after all, a troofer, seeing malign inference everywhere.

(I'd also like to add, while on the phone to transport, Jayaram had said that K had dislodged her own tube. The claim Letby must have done so came later, and K was noted as active. There are also inconsistencies from Jayaram over the size of the tube and how far it was put in).

The Trials of Lucy Letby @LucyLetbyTrials is a brilliant account that balances the overall media narrative with the issues concerning many

There are many, many other issues to address but if you feel you have read the main body of media coverage, I would love to know how much of this you were aware?

Another gem is the podcast's convincing Judge Justice Goss to release the chart to the media:

That correlation between Letby being at the scene a lot was clearly highly persuasive to many. That is statistics. How likely it is any one nurse would be consistently present is statistics. Statisticians have not been happy about this.

If the chart wanted to be truthful and accurate, it would also include all other staff - all tech, cleaning, doctors etc. 

In fact, "a leaked email shows that a senior nurse had “raised concerns” about a doctor who “features in a number of cases of babies who collapse” and "the neonatal unit ward manager... was troubled to find that by the time the chart was sent to Alison Kelly, the executive director of nursing and quality care, the column relating to doctors had been removed, leaving only the nursing staff."

Why weren't hours worked included? Or the acuity of each child? What was the basis of ruling collapses 'unexpected'?

How many deaths occurred during this time? Well, at least 13. The way infant mortality is recorded has confused this, and different freedom of information requests have gathered different answers. 

Then we move onto how Letby is recorded as present for an insulin poisoning when, in fact she was ten hours off of her shift. 

Dewi Evans, the supposed impartial servant to the court (and investigation, and paid for both roles, but whatever) decided on a way Letby could be responsible. 

By some act of witchcraft, Letby predicted Child F's 48 hour TPN bag would fail ten hours after her shift. The TPN, containing glucose, had 'tissued' i.e. come out of the vein and spilled into the surrounding flesh, causing swelling. This was why the baby was thought to be hypoglycemic. 

Having predicted it's fail, or possibly masterminding it, she poisoned the replacement. Only, these TPN bags had already been made up and were stored in refrigerators in the unit. The nearest had 5 bags. How did she know which one would be chosen, and that it would go to the correct baby?

The insulin level in both cases were astronomical, and yet, surprisingly the babies soon recovered with no ill effect. These cases came along just in time for some 'smoking gun' evidence, when Brearey took a retrospective look at results during the time period.

Even though Letby couldn't have been present, it didn't stop that gun from smoking.  

Anyone with cognitive function would surely think that during a time period of 13 months some test results may be incorrect, especially when they are assertioned by the incorrect test to identify exogenous insulin. But no one worried about that. It was Letby, whether or not she was present.

The warning on the immunoassay used to implicate Letby. That this isn't up to clinical standards is one thing, but the fact is, this is nowhere near good enough for forensic standards. But it was retrospective, and the test couldn't be re-run. Wotcha gonna do, not prosecute her and send her away for life?

Or here, when again, she was not present - via LucyLetbyTrials

She is listed as being present for an incident which began, they say, within a few minutes of her arrival at work, when the baby had been declining for hours previously. 

There was another incident, for Child G, that Letby is recorded for when she wasn't actually there, as well as Child J and Child N. Please read the link to @LucyLetbyTrials above for more.

I'll return to this at some point. There is a lot more to cover.