CLPEX Chat Board

Steve,

I think the problem here is that the conflict over Y7 is not ever going to be resolved.

McKie talks about the need to restore confidence yet takes any opportunity he can to attack the SCRO, making spurious allegations of other mistakes.

This case has demonstrated the range of ability of those who present themselves as experts, including some big hitters in the fingerprint world.
Where would these 20 experts be drawn from?

What came out at the Justice 1 committee was that every expert presented in defence of the McKies had prior knowledge, and often a prior opinion before looking at the case.

We can extend a very warm thanks to Kasey, Pat and Arie for this.
Their guidence on how to correctly analyse the evidence was very helpful for any of those who were old fashioned enough to harbour notions of objectivity.

I still find it extremely ironic that this list was compiled by the same Zeelenberg who has been such a help to Mr. Drors study. At least he has direct experience of creating the dangers Dror seeks to report.

We know that 171 'experts' have put their name to the petition, what we don't know is how many others have seen it (been primed) but have been prevented or have chosen not to put their name to the list.

Michele Triplett

There’s a lot of misconceptions about science and statistics. If we put both subjects together the misconceptions rise exponentially.

Statistics don’t prove anything. They may add additional support or refute different ideas, but they don’t provide proof. Also, statistics can be done in a variety of ways, creating different answers. Whether or not they produce valuable information is dependent on if a particular method actually applies to the situation. Scientifically, this is determined by peer review.

I agree that statistics are often used like a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination (to use a well-known quote). Used properly, statistics is a part of science, a tool. Scientists use statistics or call in statisticians to explain what an investigation is telling them (or more usually, what it is not telling them). I doubt if full-blown statistical analysis will have a part to play in day to day fingerprint work, but a little statistical awareness at supervisory or quality assurance level might be useful and just might have rung some alarm bells about the Shirley McKie identification at an early stage.

I think that many of you in the fingerprinting world and people who interpret the Daubert requirements misunderstand what “peer review” means in science. A fingerprint verification is not peer review, it is a second opinion. Peer review means agreeing on the underlying knowledge base of the practise, and in science it must be substantially based on the interpretation of evidence.

Peer review and second opinions themselves are not enough to ensure safety. A horrific example of what happens when policies are not based on research occurred when many social workers in the early 1990s became convinced that satanic child abuse was widespread and they could uncover it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/date ... 521067.stm

http://www.smwane.dk/content/view/88/30/

I am sure that the basic “knowledge base” of the existence of the satanic abuse and how to uncover it was peer reviewed, and I am sure that every child removed from their parents had second and probably third opinions from people who share the same view of the world. But it was still wrong.

I am not suggesting that anything as horrific as this is happening in fingerprinting but maybe research could resolve (and, more importantly, prevent in the future) the differences of opinion regarding the handling of discrepancies that emerged during the Scottish Parliament inquiry. If you get together and agree an industry-wide method of handling discrepancies (or even just discuss it on a bulletin board) if it is not firmly based on research using known donors of latents, you could agree on wrong, unsafe, practises.

Steve,

You said verification is not peer review, it’s a second opinion. I would say it’s a second opinion if that’s the way examiners are using it. If practitioners understand peer review and are treating verification as such, then the verification stage can be a peer review process.

That leads me to mention that, ‘peer review’ is not the same as peers reviewing your work.
You mentioned that peer review was “agreeing” on the underlying knowledge base of the practice. This thought isn’t anything new. Many scientists have already talked about how practitioners of every field misunderstand peer review to be confirmation (agreement) when it should be looking at every step that was done and asking if there enough support behind the inferences made. It should be insuring that all data was used, not just the data that confirmed the conclusion. It should be looking to see if the premises used were accepted premises. It should be trying to prove the conclusion wrong. These aren’t the only requirement of peer review. Some science books have several chapters on peer review and I don’t think it can be completely stated in a chat board forum, but peer review IS NOT 'agreement'.

Has peer review of the McKie case been adequately done? Since the case has been around for so long and the justice committee seemed to do a thorough investigation, I suppose it would look like adequate peer review was done and agreement still hasn’t been established. I am one of those people still undecided, I haven’t seen the evidence or the justification behind a valid ID and I’m not willing to exclude Shirley as the donor simply because I can’t find consistency between the latent and the knowns.

I know the original chart enlargement is on the internet but the SCRO acknowledged that the characteristics weren’t well pointed out on that chart. I tried to view Peter Swann’s justification on an internet site (I don’t remember the site) but the file was so big I couldn’t easily view it. Can anyone tell me if the justification behind the ID is available for others to view and where I can find it?

Hi Michele,

try:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin ... charts.htm

Hi Michele,

The Scottish Parliament web site has low resolution video archives of the evidence to the Justice 1 committee. If you click on th 07/06/2006 link you will see Arie Zeelenberg and Peter Swann. Peter Swann's evidence starts with the slidder about a third of the way along.

http://www.holyrood.tv/library.asp?iPid ... =Justice+1

You will need plenty of time to watch it all.

Now the clydeside six have been invited to leave employment, can we look forward to them no longer being "gagged" [an excuse that I have never accepted as being valid for their silence]. Is it not time for a debate with them being invited to pit their wits in public, with proper cross examination, against those who disagree with them?

Sorry Dick, they are still firmly gagged, this time voluntarily. Scotsman of the 1st April

THE departure of four fingerprint experts at the centre of the Shirley McKie case was a "necessary cull", her father said last night.

All have agreed to a secret severance package complete with a gagging order.

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid ... =504032007

For a minute let’s assume it isn’t a valid ID. What’s the real problem? 1) that there was an erroneous ID or 2) that the agency didn’t state or implement appropriate methods, concepts, fundamentals, and controls?

Is it possible that the real problem was poor management in that the agency didn’t state or implement appropriate methods, concepts, fundamentals, and controls (2), and the erroneous ID was a result of managements actions (or inactions)? If so, then on a superficial level getting rid of the employees may make it look like the problem has been solved but a closer look may make people realize that this isn’t the best solution to restore confidence in this agency.

Any thoughts?

I think the term is 'scapegoat'.

If they had stayed they may have lost their jobs and got nothing.
Note the timing straight after Todd resigned and immediately before the service transferred to the spsa.

I don't think we can have any confidence in the executive, Jim Wallace had no place to apologise, McConnell had no place to apologise, the executive shouldn't have paid out the money, no need for me to read out the Justice One report.

So, yes even if there was a mistake then any problem has not been solved. But IF there wasn't a mistake then there are clearly bigger problems, not only with the SCRO's institutional inability to deal with the challenge, but also with the external opinion and all the other events of the last decade.

So why did they agree the "gagging order"? I had understood that they were being pushed. What was the threat.... that they would not be pushed if they did not agree to a gagging order? (even I know that is not much of a threat!) Or was it......money????

Are there any other options?

And if it is money, well what is their price anyway? What is the price of truth? How much do they value the freedom of expression? Is this the same group that has via supporters criticised Shirley McKie for accepting money rather than going on with a fight to prove a point? I think we should be told.

It is all rather convenient isn't it. They previously claimed to be gagged (when they were not); and now will not speak because they say they are now gagged. Will this gag work if a judicial inquiry takes place?

And what was the pay off they got? Who gagged them? All these questions: so few answers.... Just another mystery in the saga.

Thomas Taylor wrote

I'm sorry, Outsider, but you really are outside of your field here. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but it would behoove you to learn a little about the subject matter before becoming too vocal a critic.

If I spent time training to be a fingerprint examiner if I was good enough I would be able to look at images of fingerprints and see patterns in them. I am a computer programmer, I need to look at a situation and see patterns of logic in it. I hope I can add something different to the conversation.

I have had another attempt to describe - in a more succinct way - that there could never have been enough certainty to accuse Shirley McKie of lying. Here it is:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

When a fingerprint misidentification occurs one of three things can happen:

A) The misidentified person cannot give an explanation for his or her fingerprint being found and denies having deposited the print. The police assume they are lying and accuse them of the crime they are investigating.

B) The misidentified person cannot give an explanation for his or her fingerprint being found and denies having deposited the print. The police assume they are lying but it is not feasible to accuse them of the crime under investigation (it might be a police officer in the investigation team or someone with a cast iron alibi). The police look for something else to accuse them of.

C) The misidentified person can give an innocent explanation for his or her fingerprint being found (the householder might be misidentified from a print in their own home). The police assume they are telling the truth and wrongly eliminate a crime scene print from the investigation.

In the absence of any data, let us assume that these three things occur at roughly the same frequency.

As long as the error rate of fingerprinting is not zero in any geographical area we will eventually get 3 misidentifications (one each of A, B and C we are assuming). If the error rate is very low then many crimes will have been investigated during this period. Case A where the misidentified person is accused of the crime under investigation will be one among this large number and will be indistinguishable from them. Every miscarriage of justice is a tragedy but if the error rate is very low, for every innocent person sent to jail we should get many criminals correctly prosecuted.

For Case B, were the misidentified person can not be accused of the crime under investigation, we need to ask how many correct accusations and prosecutions will the one misidentification be among? In the Shirley McKie case there is was no evidence to suggest that any alternative crime or incident of wrongdoing actually occurred. It is not enough to hypothesise that one incident of wrongdoing might occur in the time period, that would only lead to a 50:50 chance of an accusation being right. To give us the confidence to safely make an accusation of lying it would have to be certain that there is a large number of uninvestigated cases of wrongdoing lying hidden in crime scenes waiting to be uncovered by fingerprints.

A fingerprint identification from a location that requires an assumed instance of wrongdoing can never carry the certainty of an identification from a location where we know that a criminal had been, carrying out a crime. With only the fingerprint match to suggest that wrongdoing has occurred I cannot see any way that a case against Shirley McKie could be constructed with a low enough risk of error to accuse her of lying, far less prosecute her for perjury.

The above point applies to misidentifications no matter how they are caused – incompetent work, bias, corruption etc. One possible explanation (or partial explanation) for a misidentification is a random match. If a fingerprint match is what originates the suspicion that some wrongdoing has occurred then it could come from any fingerprint identification anywhere in the world at any time. There is an unlimited opportunity for a crime scene print somewhere to be compared with an innocent person’s fingerprint which just happens to look extraordinarily like it (a random match). On the other hand when an investigation starts in the normal way after a crime, the crime itself limits the number of prints in the investigation, so the risk of a random match in any one case will be orders of magnitude lower. What might be a random erroneous match for one fingerprint team may not appear to be a match to another team because they make their judgements differently.

Full text here: http://www.stevehornsc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/short.htm

“So why did they agree the "gagging order"? I had understood that they were being pushed. What was the threat.... that they would not be pushed if they did not agree to a gagging order? (even I know that is not much of a threat!) Or was it......money????”

Dick,

Otherwise they would have left with absolutely nothing, the lies and smears told about them over the last ten years have robbed them of everything else, as they could not be sacked for any wrong doing then they are entitled to severance.

Whilst you are on about money, why didn’t Shirley pursue her civil case?

”It is all rather convenient isn't it. They previously claimed to be gagged (when they were not); and now will not speak because they say they are now gagged. Will this gag work if a judicial inquiry takes place?”

Dick, they signed the official secrets act, I think you’ll find that is quite a watertight gag. I presume and hope that they will be free to speak under oath at the judicial enquiry. I also look forward to seeing Shirley actually answer some questions this time, all by herself.

Regards

Ah... the official secrets Act.

Tell us then, when did they "sign" it? It cannot have been before they were "sacked" because Miss McBride talked to the media. So they must have signed it as a condition of them being "sacked"? Am I right?

Which again begs the question: why? I don't for one moment believe that they "signed the official secrets act". You sign that at the start of employment, not when you leave, and only for certain secure government jobs.

Looks like a feeble and false excuse to me. No mention I see of the Official Secrets Act in the press reporting about their sacking. Or should we just assume that they are too scared to actually debate this matter?

DD

As I said before Dick, if the snp hold the enquiry then I'm sure there will be lots of interesting things to be heard.

Assume what you want, but remind me please, who walked away from the civil case? Remind me also, who walked away from the CRFP tribunial? What should we assume from that?

I know nothing of the CRFP inquiry. I do know that Shirley did not "walk away from" the court hearing. As has been explained again, again and again on this and other sites, the damages offered were what she was told the case was worth in settlement. Her case was not a public inquiry and if she had used it as such the cost of the case would have gone against her which would have cost a fortune.

What she wanted was compensation. She got it, and a hell of a lot of it.



In answer to your question: who walked away?

The answer is the Scottish Ministers, who not only were responsible for SCRO but had statements of SCRO having interviewed them. So, truly, it was the SCRO who walked away. Why would they walk away? Why would they pay so much to avoid a case? I think we all know the answer to that.

And are you going to answer my questions about when the Official Secrets Act was allegedly signed? Or is that a secret too?