A problem with the "Eddowes Shawl" DNA match

[mickreed]

Hi GUT

I've no way of telling at present as reviews always, initially, show up on the screens of those that post them...so they can be edited...However, if you or someone else were to access amazon.uk and check the reviews section you could advise whether it'd appeared yet....

Cheers

Dave

Hey Dave,

There are plenty of believers out there - well 26 - if you are to believe Amazon UK's 5-star reviews. I liked this one:

Reading some of the other reviews here I wonder how carefully they read the book. To say there is still doubt as to who Jack The Ripper was seems a bit ridiculous to me, as DNA never lies.

As we know this is very true.

[Cogidubnus]

It would seem to indicate "One born every minute" Mick...but let's be honest, whenever we buy a book, sight unseen, we do so assuming both good faith and due care from both an author and his/her publisher...the due care being, I believe, critical to the integrity of the transaction...

It is the apparent lack of post-publishing care, the unwillingness to address reasonably raised issues, that bothers me here...it could all too easily be construed as a "let's keep quiet and get a few more quid in" attitude...I don't actually think that's what's intended...I think they've just got a bit carried away...but the longer this goes on, unanswered, the less creditable they appear...I seriously feel they ought to address the issues face-on rather than hoping they'll go away...

All the best

Dave

[GUT]

Hey Dave,

There are plenty of believers out there - well 26 - if you are to believe Amazon UK's 5-star reviews. I liked this one:

Reading some of the other reviews here I wonder how carefully they read the book. To say there is still doubt as to who Jack The Ripper was seems a bit ridiculous to me, as DNA never lies.

As we know this is very true.

G'day Mick

We had plenty here on Casebook saying things like "you can't argue with the science".

[Henry Flower]

G'day Mick

We had plenty here on Casebook saying things like "you can't argue with the science".

I don't think that's quite fair. I certainly don't remember it like that. We had plenty here on Casebook saying things like "IF the science is confirmed and independently verified, we can't ignore it simply because of the lack of provenance" etc. I remember saying about a thousand posts ago that we were divided between the unconvinced and the unconvinceable. There were never many out-and-out believers here.

[GUT]

I don't think that's quite fair. I certainly don't remember it like that. We had plenty here on Casebook saying things like "IF the science is confirmed and independently verified, we can't ignore it simply because of the lack of provenance" etc. I remember saying about a thousand posts ago that we were divided between the unconvinced and the unconvinceable. There were never many out-and-out believers here.

G'day Henry

Maybe semantics between [not] many and plenty but there were certainly comments that the science settled it.

[drstrange169]

Thanks for the upated site link Gryff.

I've left the following comment on the page titled, "Don't you think it's time you knew my name?

"Don't you think it's time we had an answer to alleged the errors in the book?

Significant and well respected names, including Professor Jeffreys (Father of Genetic Fingerprinting), Mannis van Oven, professor of forensic molecular biology at Rotterdam's Erasmus University, Professor Walther Parson of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck, and Hansi Weissensteiner, also at Innsbruck and one of the scientists behind the computer algorithm used by Dr Louhelainen to search the mtDNA database, in the established world of DNA research have now disputed the evidence cited in your book.

Thanks in advance,
dusty miller"

My comment is pending moderator approval ... mmm.

[Tom_Wescott]

A million sold? Really? So he's outsold every Ripper book ever written and yet can't outsell me on Kindle? Maybe he managed to break into that elusive market in India. I've still yet to sell one there.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[GUT]

A million sold? Really? So he's outsold every Ripper book ever written and yet can't outsell me on Kindle? Maybe he managed to break into that elusive market in India. I've still yet to sell one there.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

G'day Tom

I've said it before but maybe the million includes 999,999 he bought himself.

[Peter Griffith aka gryff]

I've left the following comment on the page titled, "Don't you think it's time you knew my name?

...

Thanks in advance,
dusty miller"[/I]

My comment is pending moderator approval ... mmm.

Good luck with that Dusty - but don't hold your breath.

Today, the Huffington Post (US Edition) finally caught up with the Independent article:

Scientists Say Proof Of Jack The Ripper's Identity Is Fatally Flawed

If you scroll down to "Around the Web" there are some links to other articles by people who seem to be unconvinced.

cheers, gryff

[GUT]

Good luck with that Dusty - but don't hold your breath.

Today, the Huffington Post (US Edition) finally caught up with the Independent article:

Scientists Say Proof Of Jack The Ripper's Identity Is Fatally Flawed

If you scroll down to "Around the Web" there are some links to other articles by people who seem to be unconvinced.

cheers, gryff

Surely the pressure on RE and JL must be mounting to give some sort of reply. Or will they just hope we all go away and leave them alone.

[drstrange169]

"So he's outsold every Ripper book ever written and yet can't outsell me on Kindle?"

To be fair Tom, people here have been looking at the "non-fiction" sales figures;-)

[Peter Griffith aka gryff]

More pressure

Surely the pressure on RE and JL must be mounting to give some sort of reply. Or will they just hope we all go away and leave them alone.

Well the story about the errors is not quite viral on the web yet. There needs to be more pressure

I keep thinking that maybe Chris should write an article and try submitting it to The Guardian (perhaps for the Comment section) or another newspaper in the UK.

Then perhaps the Ripper conference in November - get the press there in some way to push the issue of 314.1c/315.1c

And hopefully mick's book review will appear somewhere soon.

cheers, gryff

[Richard Patterson]

The limits of science, limited by man.

Perhaps this spectacular fail of science towards solving the ripper case means we should settle on whatever suspect, no matter if we cant ‘see’ it, that has the most circumstantial evidence surrounding them?

[GUT]

Perhaps this spectacular fail of science towards solving the ripper case means we should settle on whatever suspect, no matter if we cant ‘see’ it, that has the most circumstantial evidence surrounding them?

And if we could get any sort of consensus on that .....

[Chris]

Well the story about the errors is not quite viral on the web yet. There needs to be more pressure

I keep thinking that maybe Chris should write an article and try submitting it to The Guardian (perhaps for the Comment section) or another newspaper in the UK.

Then perhaps the Ripper conference in November - get the press there in some way to push the issue of 314.1c/315.1c

The longer time goes on, the more it looks to me as though Russell Edwards and Jari Louhelainen are just going to keep their heads down and ignore the criticism. If that's the case, I find it difficult to believe they will attend the conference next month (though by now I'm starting to feel that nothing would surprise me).

I certainly don't intend to let this rest, and I get the impression a lot of other people feel the same way. There are quite a lot of avenues that can be explored, but in the short term I doubt that journalists are going to be interested without some new information. Probably we're going to have to think in terms of weeks and months rather than days. (Of course, there is a sense in which a university lecturer refusing to acknowledge and correct a clear error in his work should be a story in itself. But sadly our universities aren't what they used to be.)