I think Dr. Bove did a pretty good job of enumerating the physics involvedmy criticism is that Dr. Bove appears to have a very limited imagination as he ran various scenarios. But perhaps he was not given that intellectual freedomhe may have been asked to run
only a limited set of scenarios.
For instance, I would be interested in running the numbers for a scenario that could include horseplay such as straddling the railing with an intrinsic loss of balance, a reaching loss of balance, or an external variable such as the dog. I can easily envision multiple planes of injury with a vertex impact in that scenario. What about a child hanging upside down from the railing with legs (knees or feet) entwined in the spindleseither at the top railing of the spindles, or lower, near the bottom railing of the spindles?? Im not saying I strongly feel any of these are what happenedmy opinion is some kind of horseplay lead to the fall, which was unintended. I do commend Dr.Bove for stating very clearly that he could not determine if whatever happened was intentional. That was very ethical and professional.
I was attentively following Dr. Melinek right up to the point that Dinas wallet biopsy results came inwhen she mentioned Rebecca Zahau by name as the likely perpetrator of a possible assault on Max. I would put more weight in what she had stated if she had said more generally that someone, in her opinion, assaulted Max. I feel she overstepped the bounds of an ME by naming RZ specificallyif she had simply advocated for reclassifying Maxs death as a homicide, for example, WITHOUT naming RZ, I would place more value on her comments. I feel she loses a lot of credibility when she names a specific person as a possible perpetrator. Law Enforcement investigators are charged with connecting the dots of an MEs physical findings and medical interpretationso for her to specifically name RZ as the perpetrator is disingenuous and demonstrates her
wallet biopsy bias, imo.
Additionally, with the revelation that Dr. Melinek was provided with Wikipedia printouts, and postings from an anonymous internet forum as support and evidence, I feel she was professionally remiss not to include statements dismissing these items as part of her analysis and interpretation. I would place more weight on her comments
IF she had clearly stated something such as the following
(which she did not):
While this reviewer was provided with additional materials for consideration, which include Wikipedia sources and anonymous internet forum postings, these materials were not, and cannot, be given any weight or consideration in the analysis, or final conclusions, because they lack scholarly rigor, and do not represent of a review of the relevant professional literature.
That would be the scholarly, professional, and ethical way to address the forum postings and Wikipedia entries she was provided with, IMO. Even graduate students cant use THOSE sources to document and validate their student papers.
Then again, Dina paid her big bucks to review Wikipedia entries, and anonymous internet forum postings! ROFLAMO! Who exactly got the better end of that deal-- Dr. Melinek or Dina?! That is hilarious, when I stop to think about it critically!
Sheesh.
