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02 August 2024 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 8082 / Categories: Opinion , Criminal
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Trial by numbers?

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Rigged datasets & the lottery fallacy: was the conviction of Lucy Letby based on unreliable statistics, asks Jon Robins

Some ten years ago, the British born statistician Dr Richard Gill wrote an article for The Justice Gap: ‘How to become a convicted serial killer (without killing anyone)’. His provocative article began: ‘Step 1: Become a nurse’, followed by: ‘Step 2: Now sit back and wait’ for, he added, ‘an unexplained cluster of cases’.

Gill, professor emeritus of mathematical statistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, is now an outspoken champion of Lucy Letby, the former neonatal nurse who was last week given a 15th whole life order following a retrial for a single count, having been jailed last August for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six (now seven).

During last year’s trial, Cheshire police wrote to the academic, warning that his social media presence was in ‘flagrant and serious’ contempt of court. ‘“Contempt of court” means disrespect of a court,’ an unapologetic Gill

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NEWS
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Britain’s new acknowledgement that Israel’s occupation is unlawful, and accompanying settlement-goods ban and sanctions, is significant but overdue, argue Danny Friedman KC and Victor Kattan in NLJ this week
New planning fee rises, wider trade union access rights and a service-by-email trap feature in Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
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