Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions

{{drop|L|ucy Letby’s case}} is in the news. Those with only a passing acquaintance tend to suppose that, having been convicted of the murder and attempted murder of multiple infants, the case is closed and she must be a monster. And she admitted it in a note, right? But look a bit closer and the picture is complicated. Depending on your filter, it becomes a matter of pure, calculated evil, or of breathtaking systemic injustice.  

These two extremes — guilt beyond reasonable doubt and outright innocence and victimhood  — leave untouched a range of ambivalent attitudes between them.  We like our narratives to tell us things about the world, and a perspective that says, “well, it’s complicated” doesn’t tell us much about the world. It isn’t useful. So few of us occupy that space.  

Given the probabilities at play — 99% of us are neither angel or devil — allowing Lucy Letby only these two options is an injustice in itself.  

The problem with “conviction” and “innocence” narratives is that they become self-fulfilling: from either perspective you can panel-beat most subsequent information to suit that view. The hard-edged peripheral evidence we do have can and has been coloured through that lens.  

Here is BBC Reporter Judith Moritz, in a piece to camera, on reviewing Letby’s social media posts:{{quote|

“Sparky, full of fun, popular — she looks like the life and soul of the party in these photos. I don’t know what Britain’s most prolific child killer should look like. ''I’m pretty sure it’s not this, though''.}}And then a few moments later.{{Quote|“She comes across as — mousy; a bit ''normal'' — you can’t really marry that with the enormity of what she’s been accused of.”}}In this way is Lucy Letby’s apparently vivacious personality and active social life, taken as validating her wickedness. but if you have an open mind, this behaviour is ''normal''. It tells us nothing. It places Lucy Letby in that ordinary space, with the rest of us, within a standard deviation of the mean.

If — and ''only'' if — you are already persuaded of her guilt, it marks her out as a psychopath. It ''corroborates'' and ''amplifies'' her wickedness. If you believe her to be innocent, that this information has been so rudely traduced only illustrates the single-mindedness with which our vicious system will crush an innocent, unsuspecting spirit.  

Similarly, that Lucy Letby searched online for the parents of the deceased is consistent with ''either'' breathtaking malevolence — if she is a serial killer — ''or'' affecting compassion — if she is not. But by itself, it is ''evidence'' of neither. We all Google individuals we meet in real life — even people we know we probably shouldn’t: this is perfectly normal behaviour. We are curious animals.

So we must remember there is  another active participant in our judgment here: our own cultural baggage. The mechanisms by which we process information are ''biases'' — [[confirmation bias]] — a well-documented logical fallacy where we frame any information to validate what we already believe — or its less-understood converse: [[ignore|''ignorance'' bias]],<ref>JC made this term up.</ref> where we tactically ''ignore'' information that does not support, or tends to contradict, our working theory.