And thus we have made for every prophet an enemy - devils from mankind and jinn, inspiring to one another decorative speech in delusion …. leave them and that which they invent
Surat Al-Anam Ayat
A couple of weeks ago, Unherd conducted what they termed a mock trial of Lucy Letby , giving a hearing to both sides of the debate on the case. They brought in Christopher Snowdon who is someone who jumped late onto the bandwagon of the Letby case and began writing scantily researched articles on the case when he did not even have a grasp of the basic facts. In this mock trial, he proceeded to claim that Lucy is guilty . His reasoning is based on his claim that during her trial, Lucy lied several times.
Firstly it is not clear that all the incidents he mentioned are actual lies, as oppose to mistakes, but secondly my reaction to Snowdon’s disingenuous thought process on this matter is:
So what?
Lying is normal human behaviour. That’s well known in the social sciences and neuroscience. In and of itself, lying does not indicate any aberrant or malevolent nature. And it is well known in court that it is not only the guilty that resort to dishonesty. Innocent people lie too. Snowdon’s reasoning is flawed. Lying is universal. Deceit is human nature. There is no such thing as a totally honest human being, apart from the odd brain damaged person. And it is a myth that those labelled autistic do not lie, because they do. However most human beings don’t admit they tell lies, which just makes them more dishonest. Those that can admit they tell fibs are conversely the more honest ones. If you can admit you are a liar, then you are a very honest person. In a similar vein, fear of the ‘other’ is human nature. Yet no one admits to racism. Those who can admit to just to a tiny wee tendency towards apprehension of the other, are usually really, the less racist ones. And this is because they are self aware, and thus able to correct their racist tendencies, should they surface unwanted. Admitting your socially unacceptable flaws is dangerous though, which is why people do not do generally do it.
We teach children to be honest. But that does not achieve much because children learn by copying behaviour and they see the dishonest behaviour of adults and that is what they ultimately learn. As adults it soon dawns on people that honesty gets you absolutely nowhere in life. The more honest you are, the more you will be shunned and excluded from social contact. Most people do not want the truth. They will do anything to avoid it. They flee from it like a doe deer from a bobcat. The truth is dangerous. It reminds us of our mortality and of the power of the gods or nature itself.
Why is this though? Surely honesty is better. It makes us feel better. I know I appreciate it when I feel somebody is being honest with me and I don’t think I am unusual in that. And when I bare my soul, it’s like dropping several kg of barbell off my shoulders. Yes there is risk involved in that , but depending on the situation, it might be worth taking.
So why the pretence? Why bother with deceit?
Firstly deceit is not just a human thing, as is often assumed. Other animals use deceit regularly. They can be cunning and manipulative. Take dogs for example. I knew someone once who had two dalmations. One evening when she was eating , somebody had knocked on her door and when she had left the room to see who was there, the dogs had wolfed down her dinner. After this they developed a technique. Often when she sat down with a meal, the dalmations would begin to bark and run to the window to let her know that someone was at the door. At first she would get up to find nobody there. But she soon wised up. The dogs were faking the presence of someone at the door . That way they could get her out of the room and help themselves.
The moral of that story is don’t leave your dinner unattended. But it’s not just domestic animals that are blatant liars. Wild animals use deceit to. And dishonesty is widespread amongst birds, check out this article which shows how Siberian jays fake alarm calls.
https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/birds-have-a-remarkable-gift-for-deceit/
Many other birds including such diverse species as ravens, mockingbirds, macaws and starlings adopt deceptive behaviour. Mimicry is just one example of fakery that birds use. And it’s not just parrots. Lyrebirds (perhaps better spelled ‘liar birds’) use a vast array of sounds to confuse, frighten off or impress others. Beware David Attenborough on this though, as although when he documented a lyrebird cleverly making the incredible sounds of drills and camera shutters, in reality that particular bird was brought up in captivity.
Here is a little story about a lying, cheating sandpiper
It’s not just birds though. Many breeds of non-venomous snake play dead to deceive predators.
Camouflage is one method of deceit. Making yourself look like something you are not. The military of course mimic that wildlife behaviour when they use camouflage.
Nature is calculating . Animals and birds play a game called ‘prisoners dilemma’ where they are subconsciously weighing up the advantages/disadvantages of co-operation versus defection. . Human beings are no different. This is all survival mechanism. Dishonesty is fundamental to survival. And this is painfully apparent in ‘civil’ society where the deception is taken to another level to give the appearance of something that has shunned brutality. There is a film starring Ricky Gervais called The Invention of Lying which hilariously illustrates the status quo.
‘Civil’ society is really nothing but a deception. The brutality is always there, just beneath the surface, and most of it is hidden behind closed doors. This outer show of civility is only possible due to affluence. It only takes minutes post food and water running out for human beings to reveal the wild beasts they truly are, willing to rip the throat out of their neighbours to avoid an empty belly. Man is a social animal with a full belly and a vicious brute with an empty one. Thomas Hobbes in his philosophical work ‘The Leviathan’ put forward the debate on whether man is truly a social animal or a savage one. Man certainly does co operate with man to survive, but Homo homini Lupus (man is wolf to another man) is the ever present reality, never far from the surface.
Is honesty always the best police then as the old saying goes? Honesty is not going to feed your kids. And the truth is, honesty gets you pretty much nowhere in so called ‘civil society’. Where it does get you is shunned, excluded and left to rot at the bottom of the pile. Nobody bothers with honesty in a job interview. You just have to bullshit as much as you can.
‘It really is a dream come true, if you would give me the chance to slave away washing dishes surrounded by those marvellous bubbles in your kitchen of enlightenment ...
or you could try:
I really enjoy interacting with people by randomly calling them at inconvenient times and trying to sell them garbage and I especially love getting the phone slammed down on me multiple times a day and being called all the names under the sun ..
Bullshit comes so naturally that we don’t even know we are doing it. We believe our own crap. Some people lie to themselves on a daily basis and everyone resorts to that at times, the truth about yourself is probably the hardest thing of all to contemplate. I remember years ago in the early days of the internet looking on dating sites and finding self bios written by people who were looking for love. The vast majority I came across all included the same claim that the person is ‘totally honest’ and they were always looking for someone else who was also ‘totally honest and had no baggage’. I remember thinking at the time who are you looking for, a new born baby? The claims of total honesty actually put me off. Because I knew by claiming total honesty they were actually lying. If they had said something more along the lines of , I try to be as honest as I can, depending on the situation , that would have felt far more honest and real.
Snowdon claims that Lucy lied to her colleagues in a text message, when she claimed that baby A’s father had collapsed and was crying on the floor. This however is irrelevant. It seems that baby A’s parents claim this did not happen but men who collapse crying do not tend to want to admit that. This is one person’s word against another and is certainly not proof of any lie. We don’t know whether it is true or not, or who is remembering correctly and it is entirely irrelevant to whether or not any baby was murdered, or whether Lucy was involved. Snowdon goes on to claim Lucy lied when she said she couldn’t remember anything about baby D. But that is very likely the truth. It was a death that had occurred years before hand and being a nurse on a neonatal ward she dealt with numerous sick and dying babies. It is well known that clinicians cannot get too emotionally involved or they would not be able to do their jobs. They are not going to remember every patient, most they will forget. Doctors joke about their patients as a matter of course. Why then is Lucy Letby supposed to be some angel from heaven who holds each patient in her heart forever? That is ridiculous and unrealistic. Snowdon claims she looked up baby D’s parents on facebook in the months after the death and due to that she must remember details of baby D. But she looked up tons of other stuff on facebook, as do tons of other people. She is not going to remember every search. He claims she lied to police by saying she thought air embolism was only a risk in adults. He makes this assertion because she had taken a course in air embolism a couple of weeks before baby A died in June 2015. But there is a big problem with the assumption that she was an expert on air embolism just because she had taken a course in it. Not everybody who takes a course concentrates much or even listens. I know I have been on courses in things in which I still can’t remember the basics. And anyway Lucy was only first interviewed by the police in July 2018, that is over three years after she is supposed to have taken this course. I know I am quite capable of supposedly learning something and then forgetting what I was taught the same day , let alone years after. My mind wanders and that again, is a problem many people have. Lucy’s mind could have been on any number of things when she was supposed to have been playing the perfect student. We e don’t know anyway, exactly what she learned on that course. Snowdon’s reasoning is child-like.
He goes on to make the most ridiculous assertion that she lied about baby I when she said the face was pale. He claims the room would have been too dark for her to see. But human beings don’t have perfect memories, light or no light. Nurses have to get accustomed to checking people in the dark. Their eyes will accustom to it. They use torches too. Lucy may well have felt that the baby was pale somehow and her memory may have translated this to an actual viewing of a pale face. Either way memory plays tricks on people. He claims she lied about baby O, when she entered in the datix that the IV line was not in place. Apparently Dr. Brearey quickly corrected that ‘lie’. But of course this is just an assumption that Brearey is being honest. I think that those of us who have followed the case know that we see no evidence of Stephen Brearey being a particularly honest individual. Brearey had an interest in covering up the numerous mistakes made. Snowdon is just showing his bias. He has no way of knowing whether what Lucy entered on the datex is true or not.
He goes on to say Lucy is supposed to have changed the time of baby Es bleeding from 9pm to 10pm. This is because the mother made a phone call around 9pm to her husband after she had seen her baby. Whether she mentioned blood in that phone call, I am not sure, but even if she did, it does not mean Lucy lied. She could just have got the time wrong. Not necessarily a lie. Or there was more than one bleed. Or the bleed was much heavier later on. Again its all speculation. But anyone with a witch in mind, is going to put all bad things happening down to the witch.
This is really the main issue throughout the Letby trials , in that in the case of many of the babies it just seems to be assumed it must have been Lucy as she had apparently murdered other ones. But this is not how a court is supposed to work. People should be convicted on evidential facts, not vague assumptions.
Snowdon claims that in court Lucy lied because she claimed to not remember things that Snowdon claims ‘anybody would remember’. This is nonsense. People have different capacities with memory. Some people remember very sharp details about everything. Others can’t remember what they had for breakfast that morning. We are not all clones Snowdon.
So lies or no lies, none of this makes Lucy guilty. She might have lied to the police about things which she thought might make her look negligent, that is common amongst NHS staff . She may have even tried to cover up her own mistakes. All of that fairly regular human behaviour. People lie about all sorts of things to the police, for example, they may be having an affair and lie about that but at the same time it does not make them necessarily guilty of the crime they are accused of.
If this is the best that the Unherd prosecution side can do, then they are clutching at straws. They really have no decent argument. It’s just circular logic.
She’s a wicked witch , therefore she does black magic. That makes her a witch … therefore she does black … makes her a wicked… black … witch …. black ….
Like cages full of birds so their houses are full of deceit. Therefore they have become powerful and rich
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