Scepticism in Action

Reflections on evidence presented in the Lucy Letby trial

It seems somewhat fitting that as I opened my browser and began to write this post, loud thunder would issue outside. The heavens have opened up, and an almost apocalyptic deluge has started across the neighbourhood outside my window. It is now very wet. Depressingly so. And just like the mental weight of information I have been consuming over the last week, I can see storm clouds hanging almost oppressively close to the rooftops across my street.

Let me begin by saying that no matter what decision the jury returns, nothing, and certainly not the guilty verdict for Lucy that seems almost certain at this point, will bring back the sunshine for the parents of each damaged or deceased child. While some will eventually move on with their lives, others have seen their relationships wrecked by the loss of their premature and often poorly neonate. They will remain inconsolable. In any event, whatever it was that happened can never be their fault, yet it is they who will forever bear the scars.

Why Am I Writing This?

During the last week I have been pouring over transcripts, listening to broadcasts and podcasts, and reading the daily summaries of the more than 100 day Lucy Letby trial. While I am aware that there are people who have lived this single reality during every day of the trial and possibly for many months before, I think a broader perspective is warranted than that provided by some journalists who it seems are more enamoured by their own sense of vogue than providing constructive or investigatory discourse. After all, a fresh set of eyes and an open sceptical mind can never truly hurt.

Certainly not if the prosecution have gotten everything right.

One of the key aspects of the prosecution case that surprised me the most was how many members of the medical profession, including a TV doctor, gave evidence that amounted to telling the jury Lucy Letby must have done it because we know everything about medicine and there is no other explanation.

This position seems antithetical to the truth of medical knowledge over the last several hundred years. If nothing else, where it concerns medicine we often don’t know what we don’t know, and every time we make some new and illuminating discovery all that happens is that we expose a hundred more questions that we simply never knew were there to be asked. I believe that medicine, like science, will never be a completely ‘settled’ domain. The general tendency will remain that every time we come to believe we have some key piece of knowledge nailed down, something random will happen that shakes the foundation of that knowledge and we learn that there are always exceptions to the rule. Nothing is absolute, and more certainly, nothing is impossible. Yet we have seen the prosecution’s medical experts give hindsight opinion that they are absolutely certain that nothing else could ever explain what happened to any of these babies…

Except Lucy Letby.

The rapidity and repititiousness of their claims of absolute and indefatigable certainty struck me. But it was only when I saw that Lucy’s barrister, Mr Ben Myers KC, was calling a lone witness in Lucy’s defence - and the content of that witness’ statements, that I realised why. And I strongly suspect the reason for my own scepticism at the evidence we have seen in Lucy’s trial is completely lost on most. Possibly even the likes of Mr Myers KC.

Over the next several articles I am going to bring you along as my innate scepticism takes me on a journey leading from a minor detail in Lucy’s own statements, through that single defence witness’ supporting evidence, and onto a world where everything from the unlikely (pharmacy-supplied sealed bottled water) to the unwitting (a neonatal nurse’s manicure on her day off) have resulted in the unintended deaths of many tens of neonates in the neonatal intensive care unit. As we take this journey we will see why there are other possible and credible explanations that were never considered by the doctors in their rush to ensure any blame lay not anywhere even remotely near their own feet, but undeniably at Lucy’s.

Explanations that may have better guided the outcome of the trial if they had only been heard by the members of Lucy’s jury.

Stay tuned…

The next part in the story can be found here