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AnnaGilmour comments on The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom - Less Wrong
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I think you’re begging the question here. Those who are convinced that K&S are guilty seem to believe that the evidence from the crime scene itself suggests that Guede could not have been the only participant – i.e. his involvement does NOT completely explain the death of Meredith Kercher. They seem to believe this for two reasons:
The various evidence at the crime scene itself of a clean up and/or staged break-in, things like the bra being cut off or the body being moved – hard to attribute to Guede because a. he wouldn’t have had time (is this true?), and b. little effort was taken to remove evidence against Guede himself, even very obvious things like flushing the toilet.
I haven’t seen any commenters mention it here, but one of the anti-Amanda sites, in quoting the Micheli report, seemed to imply that Kercher’s injuries were inconsistent with a single attacker.
Your post appears to take for granted that these are not credible arguments, but they seem like a very significant part of the prosecution’s case – and the part that I found hardest to assess without English versions of the Micheli report and other source documents. Can you explain how you reached this level of confidence?
FWIW, I'm not an Amanda-hater …my prior probability of her guilt was 30%, and I'm ready to revise it down. I’m just not sure I fully understand your argument on this point.
One thing to remember is that Mignini fired the coroner doing autopsy investigation when that person said it was the injuries of a single perpetrator. He then hired someone who said it was more than one perpetrator. If you would like, I can find a link to back it up. So the original report said one person caused the injuries.
Huh. I wondered if something like this might be the case, but then wondered if I was being selectively skeptical of the prosecution and trying to dismiss all of their evidence. Next time I'll remember to (a) trust myself a little more, and (b) remember that reality itself is consistent rather than fair, i.e., Knox obviously didn't do it, thus if the coroner says it's more than one perpetrator, I should (b1) construct a model in which the coroner is pressured (or fired and redealt) and (b2) penalize the probability of that model because (hopefully) most coroners aren't pressured.
I'm not sure how much hope fits into the Bayesian analysis. My impression is that doing things like pressuring coroners is routine in the US and probably in Italy as well. Of course, pressuring coroners is a special case of "doing things like pressuring coroners" and thus unlikely a-priori, but its not very unlikely a-priori and once the possibility is raised it doesn't call for much penalty.
The significant factor though is not that the coroner was fired and replaced by someone who would report multiple perpetrators. The significant factor is that the original, unprompted, unbiased, objective analysis was that it was a single perpetrator.
Anna, I'd be curious to see the link on this when you get a chance.
If you type "Mignini fired coroner" into Google, a list of articles comes up. There were too many from which to choose.
Additionally, a great specific, scientific explanation and analysis on the LCN DNA gathering and testing can be found at ScienceSpheres by Mark Waterbury. He starts the blog that way. He has a PhD in materials science.
I tried a Google search -- I get a few mentions of Mignini firing his coroner, but they either don't mention a reason or they say it was punishment for leaks to the press. None seem to be from impartial sources, i.e. one is from that truejustice site, another is an article in the Stranger (seattle weekly) by a friend of Amanda's ...the closest thing to a real news site was a Vanity Fair article, and like the others it doesn't mention the first coroner saying there was one assailant.
This is the problem I mentioned in another comment -- all of our info is second- or third-hand. I'm surprised at how comfortable people are citing this stuff. If this was a comparably public case in the US, there's a good chance the entire reports from both the old and new coroner would be on the Smoking Gun and we could be linking to them directly...
It was part of the trial, however, which is why people cite it.
Again, can you give us your source for this? I'm not doubting you, I just want to get an idea of where it comes from.