But, of course, the mathematics of probability theory don't work that way. A hypothesis, such as that the apparent burglary in Filomena Romanelli's room was staged -- doesn't get points for its ability to explain the data unless it does so better than its negation. And, in the absence of the assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty -- if we're presuming them to be innocent, as the law requires, or assigning a tiny prior probability to their guilt, as epistemic rationality requires -- this contest is rigged. The standards for "explaining well" that the fake-burglary hypothesis has to meet in order to be taken seriously are much higher than those that its negation has to meet, because of the dependence relation that exists between the fake-burglary question and the murder question.

This isn't quite true. If the prior probability of being a murderer is 1 in 10^6, and I can find 30 things that are explained twice as well by the murder hypothesis as the non-murder hypothesis, then the posterior probability of being a murderer is 99.9%, in the absence of mitigating factors (since 2^30/10^6 is about 1000.) So, many pieces of weak evidence for an unlikely proposition can still establish that proposition.