Money

[JeffHamm]

As a brief (?) aside, just following up on the article that FM mentioned. There is something called the "bystander effect", in which people are less likely to help if there are more people around (the "someone else will do it" idea).

The press article suggests that's not the case, but while the odds of being helped go up with more people, that doesn't mean the probability for any given person is going up. Think of it this way, if you flip a coin, and "heads wins", you have a 50% chance of winning. If you roll a die, and "1 wins", you only have a 1 in 6 chance of winning. But, if you get to roll the die 10 times, and all you need is for one of them to be a 1, then your odds of winning with the die are better than the odds with a single coin flip.

What I've done is calculated the odds as per the findings of the research article (as above). As we see, the probability of 1 or more people helping goes up as there are more people. The probability with 1 bystander is approx 52%, so the probability of not being helped is about 48%. Now, if adding more bystanders does not decline the odds of an individual helping or not, then the odds of nobody helping when there are 2 people would be 0.48², so the probability of being helped would be 1-0.48² (around 77.3%). But, if adding more people does reduce the odds of each person helping ("someone else will do it"), then there would be less than a 77.3% chance of being helped when there's 2 bystanders, and if there were "safety in numbers", so the probability of any individual helping increases with more bystanders, then we would have a greater than 77.3% chance of being helped. And if adding more people has no impact on the probability of each person helping, then 77.3% it is.

Turns out, the observed rates are reduced, which tells us that adding more bystanders does reduce the probability of an individual helping, but given the increase in people present, the probability that at least one of them helps continues to grow. The "bystander effect" does happen (the probability for an individual goes down - someone else will do it), but the number of bystanders still means the probability of being helped goes up.

Here's the plot for comparison (the orange data is what would happen if adding more bystanders doesn't change the probability for an individual to intervene; the blue line represents the article's analysis, and we see that what is observed is less, which means the increase in crowd size is reducing the probability for each individual to get involved; notice, the predictions are of course identical for 0 and 1 bystanders; noone is there to help in the former, and there are no additional bystanders to reduce the probability when you're the only one present). The space between the two curves represents the "bystander effect".



Anyway, just thought I would share that as the bystander effect is one of those things that occasionally gets a lot of press, but the way in which it gets presented is so often badly mangled that it sounds like the probability of anybody helping goes down as the crowd size increases. it's not, it's the probability of any specific individual helping that goes down, the crowd numbers make up for that.

Oh, and also, it may not really be best described as "someone else will do it", the same thing would happen if we think of it as "somone else already has done it".

- Jeff

[DJA]

12:45 AM (approximately): Quoting Home Office File:

"Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen Street, Backchurch Lane, stated that at this hour, turning into Berner Street from Commercial Road, and having gotten as far as the gateway where the murder was committed, he saw a man stop and speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway. He tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round and threw her down on the footway and the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out, apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road, "Lipski", and then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man, he ran as far as the railway arch, but the man did not follow so far.

[JeffHamm]

Jeff,

In support of my point that human beings are not predisposed to watch other human beings being attacked and act disinterested or run away, here is an article from The Washington Post:

Forget what you may have been told. New study says strangers step in to help 90 percent of the time - The Washington Post

It states:

Philpot and his team examined 219 CCTV videos of assaults or arguments in three major cities: Amsterdam; Cape Town, South Africa; and Lancaster in the United Kingdom.

After watching all the videos and crunching all the numbers, Philpot and his team found that at least one bystander decided to help out in 91 percent of the cases studied.

The researchers also found that there was no statistically significant difference in the rates of bystander intervention across the three cities studied. Philpot said this suggests that “people have a natural propensity to help others in distress,” no matter their nationality.

Philpot was inspired to conduct the study after noticing that many of his peers in the social sciences, as well as members of the media, took for granted the idea that bystanders are generally indifferent to the plight of others. He also noticed that most previous research into bystander intervention relied on laboratory experiments or self-reported accounts of violent incidents, both of which can be “unreliable” and sometimes “strip out complexity,” he said.

Interesting. I had a look at the publication, and they also point out that "The number of bystanders at an event was positively associated with the situational likelihood of intervention (OR 1.10, 95% CI [1.03, 1.18], p .008, BF01 0.03), with each additional bystander increasing the odds that a victim receives help by factor 1.1 (Figure 2)."

The important bit is that for each bystander present, the odds of being helped go up by an odds ratio of 1.1. Meaning the odds ratio of at least one person helping goes from 0 (if nobody is there to help), to 1.1 if there is 1 person, 2.2 for 2 people, 3.3 for 3 people, and so on.

You can convert the odds ratio to a "probability of being helped", which is a bit easier to understand, by just dividing the odds ratio by a value 1 greater. So, an odds ratio of 1.1 means 1.1/2.1 = 52% chance of being helped. I've pasted a simple plot of the probability of someone helping as a function of the number of bystanders based upon their article. It pretty quickly rises up to around 90% and more (8 bystanders results in 89.8% probability that at least one will help - note, that means 7 don't of course, although generally if one person helps others will join in if present).



So, using the article you mentioned and applying it to the Schwartz situation, we know Schwartz has fled, and Pipeman is the only bystander. Based upon this research the probability of him doing as you say is 52% and the probability of him not intervening is 48%, so pretty much a coin toss.

There's nothing about Schwartz's story that needs any suspension of disbelief. There was nobody, other than Pipeman, in the street at the time. The club was noisy, with people singing and drinking. He indicates that Stride didn't scream out loudly (which would suggest she wasn't in fear of her life at that moment, something that could suggest she knew her assailant; but that could even just be she was drinking with him earlier but it also may mean she and B.S. knew each other well), so the chances of her being heard inside a noisy club, or for that to be memorable, are both low.

There's also no reason for Schwartz to go to the police to fabricate such a story. There's no follow up by him to seek any reward, or notority (in fact, he seems to possibly have made himself scarce, but that just may be because the information to the contrary is lost to us), so it doesn't look to be a 15 minutes of fame situation. Basically, he seems to have seen something, his interpretation of the intentions of the people he saw is a bit suspect but the events, stripped of his ideas of what was intended, are entirely plausible. I see no reason to dismiss the events, though I think he misconstrued both B.S.'s Lipski and Pipeman's intentions when he started moving.

I can't prove that, of course, but given Abberline and the police suggest those, and they did have the opportunity to question Schwartz on these things, I can see nothing that suggests their interpretation is unfounded, and it seems to be rather plausible - even based upon the study you pointed me to.

- Jeff

[FISHY1118]

its not inventing a new scenario. its a possible interpretation of what actually happened. but not surprised you have problems with comprehending that. As weve seen on other threads.

Its your invention of just another rabbit hole , ..
lets leave it to the rabbits.

[Abby Normal]

Inventing new senarios where Schwartz is concerned is a complete waste of time

Lets try work with what we have than what is just speculation and conjecture leading to 1000s of differences of opinions that lead to nowhere . As we've seen on other threads .

its not inventing a new scenario. its a possible interpretation of what actually happened. but not surprised you have problems with comprehending that. As weve seen on other threads.

[FISHY1118]

pipeman might have misinterpreted the attack on stride and the shouting of lipski as bs man helping stride after schwartz did something to her, and since he also looked jewish, chased him.

Inventing new senarios where Schwartz is concerned is a complete waste of time

Lets try work with what we have than what is just speculation and conjecture leading to 1000s of differences of opinions that lead to nowhere . As we've seen on other threads .

[Abby Normal]

I did state that while I find Schwartz's story suspect, it is for other reasons I've concluded it didn't happen.

In order to take Schwartz at his word, there are a lot of "hmmm, 'you sure?" cogs to the wheel, including other witness statements and what we know of nearby open boozers, that you have to disregard. As with other similar situations with this case, you could pick each cog in Schwartz's wheel, analyse each cog on its own merit and reasonably say: "aye, possible". But, when you take the wheel as a whole and all of the component cogs that require some degree of a leap of faith, I'd conclude that on balance the entire scenario is improbable.

On Pipeman and Schwartz, I think there may be a misunderstanding of human nature and working-class communities.

We live in a world today whereby we're encouraged to think of our own immediate existence, that's the message that we get through our television screens and other avenues every hour of every day; and so perhaps the nature of human beings, at their core, is lost on some people. When human beings act on instinct in a situation such as this, with little time to think through a reaction, detached from the conditioning that is pervasive; the instinct of human beings is to help people. We're social, pack animals; by nature, we're hardwired to help. In working class communities, casual violence is more prevalent, and people are less fearful of it than say in middle-class communities. Pipeman was much more likely to have been over there and finding out what was going on than running away or walking off disinterested. And, that goes for a woman being assaulted or a fella being filled in. I've lived in a working-class community all of my life and I've never seen someone walk off disinterested or run up the street while someone else was being filled in. That's just not the way it works.

There seems to be a groundswell of opinion that bystanders would have been scared of this BS Man. They wouldn't have been. In working class communities, they'd have seen more fights than they could remember and would have put it down to another idiot throwing his weight about. On the balance of probability, a bystander would have been over there trying to stop it.

but in this case they didnt. its a simple fact. trying to argue what should or could have happened is meaningless.

[c.d.]

Sorry, but unless it can be shown with absolute metaphysical certainty that all people throughout all time have always helped others 100% of the time with no exceptions all of these statistics are completely worthless in terms of what Schwartz and PipeMan most likely would have done under those particular circumstances.

"Predisposed" tells us nothing about actual behavior.

c.d.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Jeff,

In support of my point that human beings are not predisposed to watch other human beings being attacked and act disinterested or run away, here is an article from The Washington Post:

Forget what you may have been told. New study says strangers step in to help 90 percent of the time - The Washington Post

It states:

Philpot and his team examined 219 CCTV videos of assaults or arguments in three major cities: Amsterdam; Cape Town, South Africa; and Lancaster in the United Kingdom.

After watching all the videos and crunching all the numbers, Philpot and his team found that at least one bystander decided to help out in 91 percent of the cases studied.

The researchers also found that there was no statistically significant difference in the rates of bystander intervention across the three cities studied. Philpot said this suggests that “people have a natural propensity to help others in distress,” no matter their nationality.

Philpot was inspired to conduct the study after noticing that many of his peers in the social sciences, as well as members of the media, took for granted the idea that bystanders are generally indifferent to the plight of others. He also noticed that most previous research into bystander intervention relied on laboratory experiments or self-reported accounts of violent incidents, both of which can be “unreliable” and sometimes “strip out complexity,” he said.

[Fleetwood Mac]

You've focused on the notion of Pipeman fleeing out of fear, a situation you find improbable based upon your own recollection of events in your life. I had accepted that evaluation but pointed out other possible situations that didn't involve Pipeman fleeing in fear but would also fit with the information we know. We would have to rule out before we could reasonably conclude that Schwartz's story is rubbish.


- Jeff

I did state that while I find Schwartz's story suspect, it is for other reasons I've concluded it didn't happen.

In order to take Schwartz at his word, there are a lot of "hmmm, 'you sure?" cogs to the wheel, including other witness statements and what we know of nearby open boozers, that you have to disregard. As with other similar situations with this case, you could pick each cog in Schwartz's wheel, analyse each cog on its own merit and reasonably say: "aye, possible". But, when you take the wheel as a whole and all of the component cogs that require some degree of a leap of faith, I'd conclude that on balance the entire scenario is improbable.

On Pipeman and Schwartz, I think there may be a misunderstanding of human nature and working-class communities.

We live in a world today whereby we're encouraged to think of our own immediate existence, that's the message that we get through our television screens and other avenues every hour of every day; and so perhaps the nature of human beings, at their core, is lost on some people. When human beings act on instinct in a situation such as this, with little time to think through a reaction, detached from the conditioning that is pervasive; the instinct of human beings is to help people. We're social, pack animals; by nature, we're hardwired to help. In working class communities, casual violence is more prevalent, and people are less fearful of it than say in middle-class communities. Pipeman was much more likely to have been over there and finding out what was going on than running away or walking off disinterested. And, that goes for a woman being assaulted or a fella being filled in. I've lived in a working-class community all of my life and I've never seen someone walk off disinterested or run up the street while someone else was being filled in. That's just not the way it works.

There seems to be a groundswell of opinion that bystanders would have been scared of this BS Man. They wouldn't have been. In working class communities, they'd have seen more fights than they could remember and would have put it down to another idiot throwing his weight about. On the balance of probability, a bystander would have been over there trying to stop it.

[JeffHamm]

I'm saying that the experience of what I have seen throughout my life suggests to me that two men wouldn't run up the street simply because a fight broke out. Schwartz maybe due to being unacquainted with the area, but I have serious reservations over Pipeman running up the street in fear.

I don't think it's sufficient to say: "we just don't know" because we could apply that to any possible situation in this case and just call it a day. In such a situation you're left to make a judgement, and the experience of human behaviour is at least something underpinning that judgement.

I am willing to bet that just about everyone on this board has never seen two men run up in the street in fear simply because a fight broke out. That must count for something, i.e. the experience of human behaviour.

In terms of what this means for Schwartz's story, it means that in the event this did take place then I'm confident Pipeman would not have been running from a fight.

I'm not convinced with Schwartz, but not for the reasons laid out above. I'm more inclined to go with the other witnesses and I don't think Schwartz's event would have taken place unheard and unseen given that which the other witnesses stated. And then we have Pipeman in The Nelson doorway which I believe was open at the time (although not in line with licencing hours). This supposed attack, visible to anyone in the street, supposedly took place outside of an open club and not far from an open pub, with known witnesses going into the street (never mind unknown people walking up and down the street) and another witness stood at her door for some period and was able to hear footsteps walk past and a cart go past but not Schwartz's supposed attack and cry of: "Lipski". And of course, Pipeman didn't come forward as a witness.

On balance, I'd say it didn't happen. In fact, I'd say it sounds like a load of rubbish. I mean: "screamed three times but not very loudly", what does this even mean? Does this actually happen in the real world? Convenient for Schwartz and his tall tale, but a woman screams to attract attention because she is threatened, there's not much use in a muffled scream that nobody in the club or anywhere nearby can hear.

You've focused on the notion of Pipeman fleeing out of fear, a situation you find improbable based upon your own recollection of events in your life. I had accepted that evaluation but pointed out other possible situations that didn't involve Pipeman fleeing in fear but would also fit with the information we know. We would have to rule out before we could reasonably conclude that Schwartz's story is rubbish.

I suggested there's the line of reasoning which starts with Pipeman just walking off, not wanting to get involved or simply not interested in a domestic, neither of which is improbable human behaviour.

I also suggested there's the line of reasoning which starts with Pipeman doing as you suggested, wanting to see what's going on, so he heads up towards the incident. B.S., I suggested, would be inclined to confront Pipeman as he did Schwartz (as Pipeman is even more intrusive than Schwartz was). That idea then provides a number of possible continuations, where Pipeman leaves (again, doesn't want to get in a fight due to a domestic) or Pipeman confronts B.S. (won't back down from a challenge). That latter one then divides into B.S. winning that confrontation and Pipeman again leaving, or Pipeman wins the confrontation and B.S. leaves. In all of these, there is a break in the assault on Stride, creating time for her to enter the ally. Which ever one of the men remain, could then be reasoned to be angry and as such direct their anger at Stride (B.S., who was already assaulting her has now had to get into an altercation with Pipeman as well; Pipeman has gotten into a fight with some random fellow and blames Stride for this). That provides an explanation that leads to either B.S. or Pipeman as Strides killer, and allows for Stride to get out her cachous (a nervous action, based upon having been assaulted, etc).

Personally, I think any of the situations in that last paragraph are unlikely, as it requires even more confrontation going unheard. That leaves me with Pipeman leaving the scene, but not in fear, but simply out of disinterest, and Schwartz's idea that Pipeman was chasing him was a misinterpretation on his part due to his own fear of the situation.

And that is not something that seems to me to be implausible, or conflicting with human behaviour. As such, I don't see any reason to dismiss Schwartz's statement entirely (though I do think Abberline's is correct in the sense that I think Schwartz misinterprets the intentions of B.S. and Pipeman; B.S. didn't shout to Pipeman but at Schwartz, and Pipeman didn't "chase"/"follow" Schwartz, he was just heading off on his own way).

As for the "yelled but not very loudly", that's just calling out. Stride didn't scream in fear, she just spoke louder than a normal voice (perhaps she just said "no no no", or "ow ow ow" type thing). It's hardly the oxymoron that it sometimes gets presented as.

- Jeff

[Elamarna]

What Schwartz described is assault, which doesn't make any difference in terms of what I put forward.

And, the 'height of the Ripper attacks' is irrelevant. Assuming this event did happen, there was nothing to indicate it was the WM in action, and casual violence was part of life in East London at that time.



The experience of human behaviour gives us a good indicator. Two people running up the street because they see an assault or a fight, would be highly unusual, and so the balance of probability is that Pipeman did not run up the street out of fear.

Disagreeing is fine, but I'd say some opinions are built upon stronger foundations than others, and an opinion based on the experience of human behaviour has more going for it than one based on: "we just don't know".

We disagree on that too.

[Fleetwood Mac]

But it's not a fight, or an argument is it?
It's a violent attack on a women, during the height of the Ripper attacks.

What Schwartz described is assault, which doesn't make any difference in terms of what I put forward.

And, the 'height of the Ripper attacks' is irrelevant. Assuming this event did happen, there was nothing to indicate it was the WM in action, and casual violence was part of life in East London at that time.

Until we are actually in that exact situation , none of us know how we will react.

The experience of human behaviour gives us a good indicator. Two people running up the street because they see an assault or a fight, would be highly unusual, and so the balance of probability is that Pipeman did not run up the street out of fear.

Disagreeing is fine, but I'd say some opinions are built upon stronger foundations than others, and an opinion based on the experience of human behaviour has more going for it than one based on: "we just don't know".

[Abby Normal]

pipeman might have misinterpreted the attack on stride and the shouting of lipski as bs man helping stride after schwartz did something to her, and since he also looked jewish, chased him.

[Ms Diddles]

I am willing to bet that just about everyone on this board has never seen two men run up in the street in fear simply because a fight broke out. That must count for something, i.e. the experience of human behaviour.

Hi FM,

You're quite right in that I have never witnessed two men running up a street, in fear of a fight which has broken out involving other unrelated people.

I have however spent many years working with both asylum seekers and refugees.

In my experience they can be disproportionately frightened by acts of violence, drunkeness or just general weird stuff that happens on the streets of Glasgow.

It actually makes perfect sense.

Lack of English or cultural familiarity can make things appear more threatening than they actually are.

All too frequently they will have had first hand experience of racism and abuse, so there's a not entirely unjustified fear that someone commitimg violent acts may turn on them.

It can also call to mind violent acts encountered in their country of origin or during their journey to the UK.

Schwarz running makes perfect sense to me.

Pipeline fleeing doesn't.