Hasnain says:

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. This was a great human interest story mixed with an analysis of some controversial murder cases - that weren't actually murders.

"The similarities go beyond statistics to the way Letby has been vilified. Social media commentary will “make your stomach turn,” Gill says. “People are saying we should bring back hanging, shoot the bitch.” The media have portrayed her as an “evil creature,” says Neil Mackenzie, a lawyer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who specializes in medical negligence cases and co-authored the RSS report. “I think there’s possibly misogyny in there,” Mackenzie says. “The press loves bad women.”

The RSS report Gill and others published in September does not claim Letby is innocent, in part because public comment on the guilt or innocence of a person standing trial may be considered contempt of court in U.K. legal systems. “We’ve got to have no opinion on this case,” Green says, but “there’s potential here for miscarriage of justice.”

Gill says a deep cognitive bias works against defendants like Letby. People “don’t believe in chance, actually,” he says. “Quantum mechanics has been shouting at us for 100 years that the physical universe is built on randomness. … But we don’t understand this. It upsets us deeply. When a succession of bad things happens, we know there must have been an agent responsible. And so we naturally believe in devils and witches, gods and angels.”"

Posted on 2023-01-21T05:02:28+0000