So to be absolutely clear, then: taking into account all the information you are aware of, and adjusting for systematic uncertainty, what are your current probabilities of guilt conditioned on death having occurred during the following intervals?:
.95 for all the scenarios mentioned, maybe a little less for the 21:00-21:30.
On the contrary, see here for example.
Good find, and it slightly bolsters the case against Knox: contents don’t pass into the duodenum after death (which I expected), and other unspecified parts of digestion continue after death (which I would have bet against). This information slightly increases the probability that the duodenum can empty after death through digestion processes, in which case the duodenum would remain empty no matter what state the stomach is in.
The literature often emphasizes that gastric contents are of limited reliability in determining time of death. However, there is a specific circumstance in this case that make it atypically informative: the fact that the duodenum was completely empty, which by default implies that the entire meal was still in the stomach (modulo slippage issue discussed below)
(snip)
In the situation at hand, we have 100% of the last meal in the stomach, as revealed by the empty duodenum.
But that’s exactly one of the points I’m not confident of. Also even if there is 100% of the meal in the stomach, I still don’t agree that analysis can exclude 21:00-21:30 but include 21:30-22:00 to any large degree of confidence. A model should be robust in its conclusions for us to have confidence in the conclusions; if small, reasonable changes to the model change the conclusions, then we have to limit our level of confidence and weight it with or against corraborating information from elsewhere.
.95 for all the scenarios mentioned, maybe a little less for the 21:00-21:30.
Good find, and it slightly bolsters the case against Knox: contents don’t pass into the duodenum after death (which I expected), and other unspecified parts of digestion continue after death (which I would have bet against). This information slightly increases the probability that the duodenum can empty after death through digestion processes, in which case the duodenum would remain empty no matter what state the stomach is in.
(snip)
But that’s exactly one of the points I’m not confident of. Also even if there is 100% of the meal in the stomach, I still don’t agree that analysis can exclude 21:00-21:30 but include 21:30-22:00 to any large degree of confidence. A model should be robust in its conclusions for us to have confidence in the conclusions; if small, reasonable changes to the model change the conclusions, then we have to limit our level of confidence and weight it with or against corraborating information from elsewhere.