Evidence to prove a suspect valid

[pinkmoon]

Sorry PinkMoon,

Didn't see your post. Didn't mean to steal your thunder.

c.d.

I forgive you however I was tempted to take you to pub talk for a"outside in the car park"

[GUT]

G'Day c.d.

So there were knife murders. How many of them died from a cut to the throat and how many of those were prostitutes? How many women were murdered that had no other injuries other than the cut throat? Finally, how many women were murdered who were prostitutes and died from a cut to the throat without any other apparent injury and no apparent motive? There are knife murders and then there are knife murders.

GOOD questions

G.U.T.

[Errata]

Hmmm, the 'suggestion' comes from a whole lot more than that, Errata, and 'there can't possibly be two killers' is nonsense, since nobody has ever had Jack down for every single case of murder that year. The suggestion that Jack may have gone on to find Eddowes because the Stride murder wasn't enough to satisfy his blood lust was there right from the start and hardly goes against common sense. It is also fully backed up by case after case of serial offenders in more recent decades producing similar double events when their first victim either survives or fails to tick all the boxes.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because the theory is old doesn't mean in is logical. It is in fact fallacy. Serial killers retreat after failure far more often than they escalate.

My mom's friend was shot in the head with a .44 coming home from work the same night as a Son of Sam murder. They were very excited because she lived and they thought she would identify the serial killer. She identified the man who shot her, but it wasn't Berkowitz. It was a dumb kid. Murders continue with or without a serial killer in the news.

There were 11 knife murders of adult women recorded for the whole of England in 1887 and again in 1889, while in 1888 I think the figure was 16 or 17, so there was no sign of any slacking off, just 5 or 6 more knife murders of adult women that year, all accounted for in just one teeny-tiny part of the country's capital, all pretty spectacular, all with no apparent motive and all unsolved.

Sure, but lets say four of the murders were the work of a serial killer, and one was due to a failed blackmailing attempt. That's four extras because of the serial killer, and one that was in the 11 knife murders that statistically was already accounted for.

Exactly. Nothing unusual that year if we can put the extra 5 or 6 knife murders of adult women down to that presence in Whitechapel.

And we can. Three at least. One is a bit of an outlier, and one has absolutely nothing tying Jack the Ripper to the crime other that they were both in the same neighborhood at the same time. Maybe. If there was stuff in these women's personal lives that put them at added risk for assault or murder, and there was... not even counting being prostitutes, then it's far more likely that someone much closer to home was the killer. 80% of people are killed by someone they know. Maybe not like or hang out with, but know. I mean if we are going to be honest about the likelihood of an given scenario, we have to ask ourselves what says "Jack the Ripper" about each murder, and if the answer is "nothing", then we may need to revisit.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. We cannot say that Stride was a victim of Jack's because Eddowes was. If there is evidence of some kind that does link the murder of Stride to Jack the Ripper, then let that stand on it's own. But if the only way Stride makes sense is because a:Who else was going around cutting throats and b: Eddowes murder meant that Jack was dissatisfid with Stride, then there is no case against Jack in the murder of Stride, in which case we have to fall back on the 80% statistic. Because apparently 11 other guys were running around cutting throats regardless of what Jack did, and each murder has to stand on its own. It can't be propped up by another murder.

Love,

Caz
X

[GUT]

G'Day all

I've seen it asked before but never answered, figures for 87 88 89 quoted but can anyone tell me just how many of those knife killings involved slashed throats?

I Can't find it anywhere, but don't have access to many of the records those of you "on the ground" do.

Thanks all

GUT

[Tom_Wescott]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Gesundheit.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

power of a woman

Hello Jason. Thanks.

Very enterprising for a lady who had spent several hours in gaol and who had been incapacitated.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

intuition

Hello CD. Thanks.

Perhaps. And perhaps his intuition told him Watkins was walking a reverse beat?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

clever ripper

Hello (again) CD. And in how many of them did the Ripper double back and somehow find a way to . . . ?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

logic opening

Hello Errata. I appreciate your most reasonable post.

If there are future openings for logic faculty, may I put in your name?

Cheers.
LC

[c.d.]

I am all for logic and clear reasoning but why are we equating ANY knife murder of a woman to one where the woman was a prostitute and had her throat cut and her internal organs removed and there was no known motive?

c.d.

[Errata]

Gesundheit.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Gimme a break. I almost never bust out Latin

[Errata]

Hello Errata. I appreciate your most reasonable post.

If there are future openings for logic faculty, may I put in your name?

Cheers.
LC

Sure. My qualifications are that I took one semester of critical thinking and then saw an episode of The West Wing that reminded me of this particular fallacy.

My hobbies include arguing in order to feel right in a world in which I am often wrong, a pathological trained need to be one of the smartest people in the room, and being unfairly judged by a culture that does not understand my particular makeup. Oh. And I crochet.

[lynn cates]

fallacy

Hello CD. Thanks. You refer to Kate?

You cannot prove she was a prostitute any more than I can prove the converse.

But have you looked up the informal fallacy to which Errata referred? She is spot on.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

well spotted

Hello Errata. Thanks.

But you certainly spotted the one fallacy that has been my pet peeve, almost from day one.

Cheers.
LC

[Errata]

Hello Errata. Thanks.

But you certainly spotted the one fallacy that has been my pet peeve, almost from day one.

Cheers.
LC

Well I do a lot of work with health care issues, and it is the single most popular and dangerous fallacy in health care. Vaccinations are a big one. My child was diagnosed with autism after a vaccination, ergo the vaccination caused Autism. But the truth of the matter is that symptoms of autism almost always set in right about the age of two. Which happens to be when kids get this particular vaccine. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

And crusading for the mentally ill gets you a lot of stories. "My son was put on Prozac because he was depressed, he killed himself, ergo the Prozac made him kill himself". Huh? You don't think maybe the depression has something to do with that? Or "my sister was diagnosed Bipolar and she became a lesbian, ergo Bipolar made her a deviant". Or "This guy was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and he went and killed a bunch of people, ergo mentally ill people are dangerous." As though the diagnosis of a condition a person has had for years magically makes them monsters all of the sudden. It's pretty brutal.

And oh my god the laughs you would have at the bizarre logic that comes from people trying to not have a baby. I did this wacky thing, I didn't get pregnant, ergo it prevents pregnancy. No it doesn't. You just did unspeakable things with soft drinks for no reason. And it is damned hard not to laugh in these poor girls faces, but it's whats called magical thinking.

Let me put it to you this way. My aunt took my cousin to go see Santa. Nine months later, my baby cousin was born. Ergo Santa brought my cousin a baby sister. Or ergo Santa is my baby cousin's father. Or ergo my aunt has a twisted fetish for Jolly old Elves.

The visit to Santa did not cause my baby cousin to be born. Yes, one came after the other, but one did not cause the other.