'Cricket finished, so a cursory google.
There are people here who insist that the shift chart is not statistical evidence. The Royal Statistical Society disagree. It's up to you in terms of whom you place more store, but my gut feel is that the RSS have more of an idea of what they're talking about.
Anyway, here's a link to a letter from the RSS to Lady Justice Thirlwall.
Statistical aspects of the Lucy Letby Inquiry.
The link/letter includes:
However, it is far from straightforward to draw conclusions from suspicious clusters of deaths in a hospital setting – it is a statistical challenge to distinguish event clusters that arise from criminal acts from those that arise coincidentally from other factors, even if the data in question was collected with rigour. This is an area where the Royal Statistical Society has recently conducted work. In 2022 we released our report, Healthcare Serial Killer or Coincidence? Statistical issues in the investigation of suspected medical misconduct, which details some of the challenges in using statistics and data to identify criminal activity in a medical setting and sets out some proposals for how statistics might be properly used.
You are missing something here. I am not sure how many times we have tried to explain this.
We do understand the point you are trying to make. YES, it is possible to do sleight of hand tricks with statistics and clusters and shift rotation statistics. YES, it was pointed out by the RSS, we are aware.
However, the jury did not base their reasoned conclusion upon a shift chart or a spike or cluster of deaths.
The jury painstakingly sorted through hundreds of documents, shown to them in an organised DAY BY DAY analysis of each medical incident.
It was organised in a linear fashion---Baby A, Baby B, Baby C up through Baby P.
27 incidents taken chronologically, and looked at minute by minute, using legal documents, medical reports, witness testimony, digital evidence, phone data, social media messages, texts, medical observation logs.
By doing so in a painstaking fashion, for each and every baby and each and every incident, the jury had evidence proving that Nurse Letby WAS PRESENT for every single incident in this case.
There was no sleight of hand, no tricks concerning statistics or shift changes or percentages, etc.
The jury saw credible documented evidence for each and every charge. They acquitted her for some of the charges because it was not clear enough for them ---it was not beyond a reasonable doubt.
There were charges which were beyond reasonable doubt that Nurse Letby committed murder and attempted murder upon these babies.
It is frustrating that people are saying the jurors were tricked and the accusations were based on faulty statistics etc. There was actual evidence for each and every guilty verdict in this case.
