As it happens, in the present case, the only material found in the small intestine was at the very end, near the ileocecal valve.
I agree, but I don't know whether other material would have been found if present. Is searching the entire small intestine feasible, and if so was such a search performed? Would food in the middle of the small intenstine after death have continued to digest?
... (read 1119 more words →)Prof. Umani Ronchi, at the hearings of 04-19-2008 and 9-19-2009, never discussed "an imperfect application of the ligatures" at the duodenal level, but rather the [supposed] failure to ligature the duodenum on the part of Dr. Lalli during the autopsy (p. 23, hearing of 9-19-2009:
So to be absolutely clear, then: taking into account all the information you are aware of, and adjusting for systematic uncertainty, what are your current probabilities of guilt conditioned on death having occurred during the following intervals?:
.95 for all the scenarios mentioned, maybe a little less for the 21:00-21:30.
On the contrary, see here for example.
Good find, and it slightly bolsters the case against Knox: contents don't pass into the duodenum after death (which I expected), and other unspecified parts of digestion continue after death (which I would have bet against). This information slightly increases the probability that the duodenum can empty after death through digestion processes, in which case the duodenum would... (read more)
Thanks for another well-researched reply, let's have a couple more posts on this, and then turn to the DNA for a bit.
On the other hand, if we do take systemic uncertainty into account (as we ultimately must), a shift of 15:1 or even 5:1 would be significant, given your estimate of .95 probability of guilt, or 19:1 odds.
The problem is that systemic uncertainty works both ways. If I see there being, say, 10 times as much evidence for guilt then there is for innocence, I'll still cap the probability of guilt at .95 anyway, due to systemic uncertainty. If I change my mind and decided there was 5, or 20, times as... (read 717 more words →)
I would sooner hypothesize that Meredith's last meal actually took place closer to 19:00 than 18:00, given the vagueness of the testimony on the matter. This puts her within 2 standard deviations, perhaps even 1.5.
If we model the meal start-time as a normal distribution, then it'll be simple to add it to the model and combine it with the other sources of uncertainty, since two normal distributions sum to a new normal distribution with a variance equal to the sum of the variances. Though now that I mention it, a lot of the other bits of uncertainty might be somewhat log-normal because they might multiply the time rather than add to it.
... (read 1179 more words →)But,
Surely you meant the defense appeal document here?
Yes, typo.
My interpretation of Ronchi doesn't depend on the defense appeal; it's simply the common-sense default meaning of what he said, as reported in Massei-Cristiani...
I don't agree with your common-sense default meaning in the English translation, then, although of course the original Italian may be more enlightening.
...and confirmed by general information about average gastric emptying times.
That reasoning seems circular to me: the question of what the times are in this case, is exactly what I'm trying to determine here.
... (read more)But even if it did, the appeal documents constitute the defense's reply to the Massei-Cristiani report, and so I don't see why they are any less useful
Great, give me a top-level post when the knife translation is finished, or when you think it's in a good enough state to back up your claims in the dna discussion.
Reply to: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/6k7/experiment_knox_case_debate_with_rolf_nelson/4jmb
Didn't realize you updated, looks like we can't go more than 8 or 9 deep before the RSS feed stops notifying about thread changes.
In terms of narrowing down what Umani Ronchi was actually saying, saying that the prosecution claims something in its appeals document isn't useful evidence. If there's a specific quote of Umani Ronchi that the prosecution makes, that might be useful, as long as the quote is clear enough that we can deduce it isn't being quoted out-of-context.
... (read 794 more words →)It sounds like you might disagree with... another of Raffaele's consultants, Introna, who placed the start of attack between 21:30 and 22:30.
Not according to p. 180 of Massei-Cristiani, where Introna is
Let's talk about the dna some more once you guys have finished translating the relevant parts of the independent report, then, if your argument hinges on details of the independent report rather than just the conclusions.
We're talking here not about the time it takes for the stomach to emtpy completely, but rather the time it takes for ingesta to begin passing into the duodenum ("T_lag").
Sounds good. In your case, for one particular meal where the subjects had probably fasted beforehand, the lag is just under 2/3 of the half-time. If you accept Umani Rochi's half-time of 360-420 minutes, then the lag could be 2/3 of that, or 240+ minutes. Of course, for... (read more)
Rebuttal to: The Amanda Knox Test
If you don't care about Amanda Knox's guilt, or whether you have received unreliable information on the subject from komponisto's post, stop reading now.
[Edit: Let me note that, generally, I agree that discussion of current events should be discouraged in this site. It is only because "The Amanda Knox Test" was a featured post on this site that I claim this rebuttal of that post to be on-topic for this site.]
I shall here make the following claim:
C1. komponisto's post on Amanda Knox was misleading.
I could, additionally, choose to make the following claims:
C2. Amanda Knox is guilty of murder.
C3. The prosecution succeeded in proving Amanda's guilt beyond a... (read 1149 more words →)
I finally got around to reading through the appeal motivation and the relevant parts of the Conti-Vecchiotti report, and I find nothing to lend credence to the innocence hypothesis. If anything, I would judge the timing of the double-DNA knife testing seems to move the 'laboratory contamination' hypothesis from very very very unlikely to very very very very unlikely.
So in the end, I have to apologize to kompinisto as I have inadvertently wasted both of our time in suggesting this debate; our failure to reach a consensus on an accurate truth in this issue is a mild lose-lose.