title:

Learning from Lucia



abstract:

Lucia can teach us many lessons, provided we dig deep enough to uncover the all too human facts behind official legal or scientific or medical histories. The tunnel-vision which characterized the case of Lucia de Berk case was cemented in the two weeks around "the" nine-eleven inside a hospital in the Hague. Once by the end of those two weeks a major medical institution had announced officially and emotionally to the world that it had caught a serial killer, it must have been very hard for those who brought charges - a few individuals at the very top of the very same institution - not to have had some large influence, deliberately or innocently, on the results of police investigation, and hence on the contents of the dossiers which went to the courts.

The medical specialists interpreting the medical data about the alleged crimes to the police were the same persons earlier treating those patients, the same persons who earlier had made, as is completely normal, some occasional errors of diagnosis or treatment. The events chalked up against Lucia had to become unexpected and inexplicable, though earlier, every single one had been a completely unremarkable occurrence. The collegiality of the medical community means that mistakes by medical specialists can hardly be admitted in public by others inside the same relatively closed and influential community. Medical authorities stood firm by their own previous and later provenly mistaken diagnoses. Others were loath to criticise a highly regarded colleague's decisions in such a critical case; while all the time the same mantra was being repeated by the insiders at the top of that pyramid, "there is so much more ... this is just the tip of the iceberg".

In my opinion, the Lucia case was a classic witch-hunt and witch-trial triggered by an unfortunate and unlucky interaction between a few key personalities. So, how is that witch-hunts and witch-trials can still take place, even in the capital of European Justice? And how can (could?) the damage be undone? Is Lucia unique or is she universal? I'll draw parallels with the little known cases of José Booij and Kevin Sweeney, pointing out some universal characteristics of these all too recent modern tragedies. I'll also give recommendations for the future. If such an enormous catastrophe can so easily occur through an unlucky interaction between a few crucial personalities, it can occur again. The social structures which facilitated the catastrophe need to be analysed and maybe some should be adjusted.

As a statistician, not a psychologist, historian, sociologist, cultural anthropologist, politicologist or lawyer, my story will be anecdotal and personal, but my aim is to present what I believe to be "the facts" as a challenge to my colleagues from social science and the humanities. Do you agree with my analysis? If not, can you do better?

The lawyers have already learnt from Lucia. So have the statisticians, as well as many others in forensic science. The medics persist in looking the other way. The nurses have no voice in our society. Who is going to learn what, next? As academics in the most positive sense, I think it is our primary duty to lead the way in understanding our society, for the future good of our society.


My personal website contains discussion and links to further material. In particular

http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~gill/Learning_from_Lucia.pdf

(slides of a lecture with the same title but some more specialistic content, AIstats conference, Chia Laguna resort, Sardinia)