The Leander Analysis

[Ben]

But "Fish influenced Leander" (or even "tried to") doesn't mean that Leaner gave a more favourable answer because of Fish's behaviour.

It needn't necessarily mean that, Victor, and I personally hope it doesn't. I'm still firmly of the opinion that, for some reason, Leander has given radicaly contrasting views. In the interests of maintaining the peace, and out of respect for the individuals involved, I won't speculate further as to why this should have been the case, but I find it odd in the extreme, and I even provided an example where a contradiction was proven to have occured.

Ultimately, I think it would have been prudent to have allowed Leander's initial comments to stand without pressing him for additional "clarification", especially after he made it clear that he did not wish to elaborate further.

Best regards,
Ben

[babybird67]

Ben we are dolts! Garry nailed this in his very first post...

look, here:

Equally, the specimens themselves originated from here on the Casebook site as part of a list posted by Sam purely for illustrational purposes. Uppermost on the list was one of the three signatures appended by Hutchinson to his police statement. The other two were absent. Worse still, not a single one of the Toppy signatures included the William that we know to have been an integral part of his regular signature. In scientific terms, such omissions constitute a case of sampling error and are sufficient to invalidate the entire analysis.

Garry originally italicised this, but i have underlined and made it bold as well just to emphasise further. Garry goes on to point out that this is significant sampling error and furthermore invalidates the entire analysis.

This must be conceded by anyone interested in establishing the facts in a scientific, objective and non-biased way.

Apologies to Garry for overlooking this most salient and significant point...you were right in post one...why are we still arguing? Even Sam would have to agree with this, i am sure (please post Sam and let us know what you think).

And yet, for all of the sampling error and induced bias of which Frank was patently unaware, he was only able to conclude that ‘It cannot be ruled out that we are dealing with the same person’. .

Quite right Garry...none of the bias or sampling error was of Leander's making. All that lies squarely at the door of one poster here and that is Fish. I wish to make clear that i have the utmost of respect for Leander and for what he has said: it is not his fault that relevant information he has been led to believe has been included has been deliberately withheld from him. The flaws and failings of the Leander analysis have never been anything to do with Leander's abilities in his field whatsoever, but the defective samples and bias that has led a campaign to claim Toppy as Hutch based on working backwards from a position of certainty and trying to force the evidence then to fit the theory. That is not objective. That is not scientific. That is not acceptable.

Apologies once again Garry for not picking up on this earlier...i guess it was so certain in my mind that nobody could possibly withhold such vital information from an analysis of this kind.

[Victor]

There shouldn't have been any "picking" at all, Victor. That's the crucial point that shouldn't be overlooked.

Absolutely. And if it was blind it would be better still. Was the Iremonger opinion blind?

Fisherman admitted that he had a "need" for his earlier conclusion to be correct, and so he "picked" one signature to send Leander - coincidentally, the one he thought most resembled the Toppy entry.

Or the one most likely to be genuine? In Fish's opinion (not that I'm agreeing with it).

There is no question that Fisherman influenced Leander's opinion. I'm not saying he did so through use of deliberately devious tactics, but "influenced" it certainly was. Even setting aside the signature "picking", there's the recent communication with Leander which amounted essentially to: "Ben has interpreted your words as follows, but before you agree with him, just remember that he has called you a liar". Appeal to the emotions of the expert, and you're guaranteed to engender a skewed response.

But "Fish influenced Leander" (or even "tried to") doesn't mean that Leaner gave a more favourable answer because of Fish's behaviour. That would be a question of Leander's integrity in dealing with the information supplied.

KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

i had assumed Fish had naturally supplied all the relevant information. It beggars belief that he did not. I wish we had known this six hundred and forty thousand pages ago...it would have been much clearer then that the Leander cannon misfired because of improper loading and a very damp squib!

utterly unbelievable!

I've told you a million times, don't exaggerate.

[Ben]

You can allege that Fish chose the signature because it's closest, whereas he states he picked the most complete and likely one

There shouldn't have been any "picking" at all, Victor. That's the crucial point that shouldn't be overlooked. In the early 1990s, Sue Iremonger obtained the original documents - the marriage certificate signature of Toppy, and all thee statement signatures. It is generally accepted that document examiners must be supplied with as much material as possible in order to increase the accuracy of their results. That didn't happen in the case of Leander. Fisherman admitted that he had a "need" for his earlier conclusion to be correct, and so he "picked" one signature to send Leander - coincidentally, the one he thought most resembled the Toppy entry.

There is no question that Fisherman influenced Leander's opinion. I'm not saying he did so through use of deliberately devious tactics, but "influenced" it certainly was. Even setting aside the signature "picking", there's the recent communication with Leander which amounted essentially to: "Ben has interpreted your words as follows, but before you agree with him, just remember that he has called you a liar". Appeal to the emotions of the expert, and you're guaranteed to engender a skewed response.

[babybird67]

The point, that more signatures would inevitably introduce more dissimilarities.

How do you work that out? It would only give more opportunity for the expert to make up his own mind whether there were more similarities or differences, and what weight he should give to either. If the other signatures were more similar, they would have introduced more similarities, woudlnt they? They were deliberately excluded from the analysis by Fish because he thought they would introduce more dissimilarities because he wanted Leander to conclude the similarities outweighed the differences. That's not how science works. That's how bias works. Fish destroyed Leander, not me.

You can allege that Fish chose the signature because it's closest, whereas he states he picked the most complete and likely one.

Right. You are actually thinking about what you say arent you? So if someone thinks a signature is a "likely" match, but two others allegedly by the same person are correspondingly less likely, it is perfectly acceptable to de-select the pieces of information that might throw doubt upon the pre-conceived conclusion? Are you serious? It's a good job we don't approach the rest of Ripperology with the same disregard for objectivity...several suspects would have already been hung merely for being "most...likely" than others. That's not how it works, Victor. Not for sentient intelligent beings anyway

There was no bias

Utter nonsense. Selecting material you think best supports your conclsions is bias. Fish is guilty of that by his own admission. I could as easily approach an expert just supply signature 2...that would be just as biased. To avoid bias you objectively examine and analyse all the relevant material, not just what hasnt been withheld from you.

I think that allegations that Fish influenced Leander's opinion are ridiculously insulting to Leander's integrity.

Then you misunderstand me. Leander's integrity is not in doubt: Fish's integrity is, on the other hand, in tatters. Leander was not given a chance to give an informed opinion because his opinion was manipulated by Fish's selective sampling to be misinformed and flawed from the very beginning. Leander's views are worthless in this matter because of Fish: if you are looking for someone to blame for that state of affairs, you need to look further in the direction of his friend, Fish.

[Victor]

Look - and you will see that these are not my words, but the words of a respected document examiner, who has written a book on the subject so far in its 3rd edition.

I put the passage up so that everyone could see it easily, but don't blame me if you don't like it - I didn't write it!

Hi Jane,
I never said you did, and I'm not blaming you for anything, all I did was put my interpretation on what it says, hence the "zed"/"zee" analogy. I think that the passage you quoted is just a "cover your backside" get someone familiar with the samples comment, that is just common sense, akin to "get a plumber to check your plumbing, not an electrician".
KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

What's your point here Vic? That where there are three examples of a signature it is all right for someone to select the one that is most similar because they WANT to believe they are by the same hand and therefore just show that to the expert?

The point, that more signatures would inevitably introduce more dissimilarities. You can allege that Fish chose the signature because it's closest, whereas he states he picked the most complete and likely one. In either case the question "Is this signature by the same person as this one?" has been completely answered to the best of his ability, but that's a different question to "Is this one the same as this one, and this one, and this one?" That's why the blind analysis would be better.

With-holding information is bias; bias is unprofessional; Leander did not have the full set of signatures to compare. How do we know what he might have concluded if he had? It's too late now. Leander's view is utterly useless.

Asking fuller or more detailed questions doesn't invalidate the original question, you just need to be careful in the conclusions you draw from the answers, and avoid using the answer to the limited question to draw conclusions where you really need the fuller answer.

That there is doubt about which of the three sigs are Hutch's is even MORE reason to include them.

No, that's more reason to complete a double-blind examination where you throw in YOUR attempt at doing the signature too.

Experts need the full picture, not copies, not selective sampling, not idiots skewing their results with unforgiveable bias.

There was no bias, the question asked did not give the fuller answer you require. A fuller answer needs complete access to the information.

I think that allegations that Fish influenced Leander's opinion are ridiculously insulting to Leander's integrity.

KR,
Vic.

[babybird67]

me too....

i had assumed Fish had naturally supplied all the relevant information. It beggars belief that he did not. I wish we had known this six hundred and forty thousand pages ago...it would have been much clearer then that the Leander cannon misfired because of improper loading and a very damp squib!

utterly unbelievable!

[Jane Welland]

Victor

Look - and you will see that these are not my words, but the words of a respected document examiner, who has written a book on the subject so far in its 3rd edition.

I put the passage up so that everyone could see it easily, but don't blame me if you don't like it - I didn't write it!

best wishes

Jane x

[Ben]

Indeed, Beebs.

I must say, I'm really surprised by my failure to notice all this before!

All the best,
Ben

[babybird67]

precisely Ben

perhaps we should just look at the Kelly murder and discount all the other canonicals...after all, one's opinion is so much more informed when one ignores most of the evidence.

[Ben]

I´m off for a while now

You mean you can resist posting for a whole "while"?

very much resembles the suggestion of a police force clearing a man for a stabbing murder in spite of his having a bloodied knife in one of his pockets - for the reason that the other pockets were empty

But by your logic, you wouldn't even have given the policeman the opportunity to look in the other pocket, thus preventing him from making the discovery that it contained a sachet of ketchup and a half-eaten hotdog, thus indentifying the breadknife's intended purpose. You wouldn't have allowed him to examine the CCTV camera that clearly showed that another man committed the crime.

Fundamentally, you deliberately withheld information that would have made the Leander analysis far less meagre, and could have influenced his findings in all sorts of ways. I'm astounded that I never clocked this before, but this is what happens when you have a self-confessed "need" for your prior conclusion to be correct.

it lies in what he saw and in what he said; that a match seems a probability

Oh, that's a shame.

Despite my friendly plea, he just repeated himself again, so I'm afraid we'll need that generic response again:

Once again - and a trillion more times if necessary - I utterly reject the professed "surprise" if it were not a genuine match since that view is in stark contrast to his initial neutral stance. He couldn't possibly subscribe to both stances simultaneously.

[Victor]

In these cases, caution must be exercised so that what may be considered unusual is not given too much weight.

Oh, just "exercise caution" then because for example English people typically use "zed" whereas Americans use "zee", and someone might think it uncommon when it's not.

[Fisherman]

I´m off for a while now, but I will leave you all with the assertion that theorizing that the two unexamined signatures would have meant that Leander would have put Toppy in the clear, very much resembles the suggestion of a police force clearing a man for a stabbing murder in spite of his having a bloodied knife in one of his pockets - for the reason that the other pockets were empty...

Lenaders relevance lies not in what he did not see and what he did not say - it lies in what he saw and in what he said; that a match seems a probability.

The best,
Fisherman