Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes
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I do understand that it is jarring when people present a timeline idea, where the events on the timeline are placed at a clock value that doesn't correspond to what a witness says. At first blush, it looks like one is ignoring the evidence and just "making it up". However, what Frank, George, and myself have been doing is far from that. Each of us, using slightly different methods, are attempting to estimate the time interval between events described by the witnesses. We also are attempting to make those estimates using as little "guess work" as possible, meaning we build those intervals using objective measurements, like the distance between two locations and standard speeds of travel for walking, running, and "hurrying". Anybody who re-calculates our values should get interval values very close to what we present, with differences due to the fact that each time you measure those distances the exact measurement will tend to differ slightly. This is why Steven when working on his book, would take multiple distance measurements and then work with the average value. That provides a more reliable and generalisable value. I often forego that in a thread, just to save time for a post. For a more important work, though, that is what one should do. Also, I think it is important to look at witness statements and take into account the general tendency to overestimate short durations, particularly under stressful conditions (like waiting for the police to arrive), although the variability associated for an individual durations estimate is incredibly large.
Anyway, these are objective estimates because the value I get is not selected by me rather it is the result of what the distance estimate is and the speed estimate. By using average walking/running speeds, one does not get to "fiddle" with the speed parameter for different witnesses, again removing the influence of the researcher's beliefs (I can't just slow down or speed up someone to "make them fit" what I want).
It is important to avoid, or at least minimize if unavoidable, introducing intervals based upon "I think this would require X amount of time". We will have a tendency for our estimate of how long something will take to gravitate towards the value that fits our expectations. This is why I have applauded George for taking the time to do as best he could with regards to estimating Deimshutz's time to complete his "arrival sequence". He himself had said he expected it would require around 5 minutes or so, and was surprised to find it was 1m 50s! Knowing an objectively derived value for that key piece of the puzzle is incredibly useful information in rebuilding the events.
Anyway, by rebuilding a temporal sequence, to get something like: Event A (0) -> Event B (1m 50s) - > Event C (2m 30s) -> Event D (1 m 0s), then all that remains is to select a "standard time". If, for example, Event A and B are events where one witness gives a time (say 10:00) for Event A and Witness B also gives the time 10:00, but for Event B, but we know there has to be 1m 50 s between Event A and B, so we have to "standardize" the times. It is good practice to use "30 s" for the seconds value when witnesses give a time, because we don't want to bias the time to be in either the early or later portion of the minute value.
So, to standardize the times to Witness A standard Time:
A (10:00:30) -> B (10:02:20) -> C (10:04:50) -> D (10:05:50)
But if we Standardize to Witness B, we get:
A ( 9:58:40) -> B (10:00:30) -> C (10:03:00) -> D (10:04:00)
These are exactly the same timeline! They refer to the exact same points in " the flow of time", the difference in the values is like having different time zones. We're not "changing times" rather we're adjusting for the fact that the clocks are from different "time zones". And since Witness A and B make their statements based upon "different time zones", the value in the presented timeline has to be different from their statement once we adjust everything to a common time zone.
What has impressed, and encouraged, me is the fact that the timelines that George, Frank, and myself have all come up with, while referenced to different time zones, are all very very similar in terms of the temporal sequencing. There's a minute here or there type difference, but given these are estimations that is to be expected. And, given we've tended to standardize to different statements, we end up with "constant shifts", as per the mock lines above.
- Jeff
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