AnlamK comments on Casey Anthony - analyzing evidence using Bayes - Less Wrong

2 Post author: Zachary_Kurtz 07 July 2011 05:19PM

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Comment author: AnlamK 10 July 2011 01:49:32AM *  0 points [-]

The only consideration I can think of even close to the insightfulness of komponisto's analysis of how the coverup is the only hard question in the Knox case would be to ask how often mothers cover up a murder of their children they were not culpable in. And when you ask it like that, then Anthony looks highly likely to be guilty.

This morning I read the following. I still don't have statistics on this but this should be relevant:

Nicholson, who worked as a social worker on the child abuse team at Dayton Children’s before becoming director of Care House in 1998, said there are facts about the case that she finds extremely troubling. “What I can tell you definitively is that the parents of children who die accidentally don’t lie about it; they don’t wait 31 days before reporting the deaths, and those are facts of this case that are seemingly indisputable,” Nicholson said.

Comment author: gwern 10 July 2011 02:38:39AM 0 points [-]

That doesn't really tell us much - lying about accidents is rare, OK. Parents murdering their children, accidentally or deliberately, are also pretty rare. It's the ratio of rarity which tells us which to prefer in lieu of any other evidence - which is rarer?