Talk:Lucy Letby#rfc 9417579

At this point in time she is guilty and in prison for life terms. This is biased towards appeal and should show no favour u til a point where she is either incarcerated or free. The shoo Lee conference offered no new information. Everything has already been covered in trial and should be treat as such. 2A02:C7C:C300:FB00:4563:B235:1B06:395F (talk) 18:34, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

:That’s a matter for discussion. IMHO, the Shoo Lee conference revealed many issues which were not covered in the trial. The scientific justification for the new medical “opinions” - combined with scientific criticism of the ones presented by the prosecution, can be argued legally to be “new evidence” in a legal sense, as some authoritative and establishment legal figures have already publicly stated. Sorry I don’t have references to hand right now.Richard Gill (talk) 08:04, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

::That is a matter to be discussed in court, not by wikipedia editors. The position of this page is to be guided by WP:NPOV and WP:NOR HouseplantHobbyist (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

:::The convictions are facts and should be recorded. This is not affected by new claims or "controversy". The new claims and the controversy should be discussed as such. S C Cheese (talk) 09:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

the final verdict about what is true is different from the court verdict.

in most cases, those disputing the final court decisions are conspiracy theorists etc, so court decisions are a good proxy for social consensus and reality.

here, however, a lot of serious academics and judges (even SC judge Lord Sumption) think the court decision was wrong.

since Wikipedia is about documenting the facts, and isn't a legal institution, "court decision is the only truth" isn't relevant.

we should cover the court decision, of course. the entry still labels her a murderer etc.

but the reality that a big group of non conspiracy academics, doctors and judges aren't convinced of her conviction is central to this story Jazi Zilber (talk) 02:33, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Why is every other similar serial killer labelled as such in the opening bio (Shipman, Norris, Geen, Allit) but this article says “nurse convicted of..”. Please use the term serial killer to reflect the conviction and two failed appeals. This is disrespectful to factual journalism and the victims. 217.155.80.215 (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

:This has been discussed at length before, and it is unlikely to get us anywhere raising it again, but I do agree that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

::I agree that it is time to revisit this and remove the WP:UNDUE influence of legally untested opinion, expert or otherwise. HouseplantHobbyist (talk) 13:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

:::In my opinion, scientific evidence if supported by argument and data and scientific literature should not be denigrated by labelling it "opinion". It should be tested in the scientific arena, and possibly in the context of an Inquiry (ie, following inquisatorial rather than adversarial procedures). One does not reliably test scientific theories in a court of law. The present societal debate about the Letby convictions is for a large part about scientific controversy. Of course it does not change the *current* legal status of Lucy Letby. But the argument that scientific controversy should not be covered in this Wikipedia article because it is presently merely legally untested opinion is in my opinion a fallacious argument.Richard Gill (talk) 09:16, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

::::Yes, but a wikipedia article about Lucy Letby, as this one is, is concerned with her and what she has been convicted of doing. Calling it opinion is not a denigration, it is merely its current status in comparison to the convictions which still stand and have been affirmed to be safe.

::::I didn't say that such opinion should not be covered; I said it should not be given [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:UNDUE&redirect=no WP:UNDUE] influence, for example by trying to deny that her convictions place her firmly into the the category defined by the definition of a serial killer. HouseplantHobbyist (talk) 17:59, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

:See the RfC here. DominicRA (talk) 16:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

{{U|Say ocean again}}, you have removed the above maintenance templates again in this edit [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby&diff=1282316509&oldid=1281590210] and previously removed them in this edit [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby&diff=1278725719&oldid=1278725429] and prior to that in this edit [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby&diff=1265413464&oldid=1264470065] and, indeed, previously moved the primary source template here [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby&diff=1252344940&oldid=1252344607]. These templates have been added by a variety of editors (I see at least 4). It is regrettable that editors did not always add talk sections when adding these, but they have been discussed. The templates have clear guidance as to when they may be removed, viz: {{tqb|You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved.
2. It is not clear what the issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given.
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.}}

The first of these is clearly not met. The second does not seem to be met as {{U|PARAKANYAA}} left clear edit summaries on the last restoration that say: {{tq|I have said, repeatedly, what constitutes undue weight and primary sources. primary sources can be, and often are, primary sources. there is a play by play of the trial sourced entirely to individual news reports on the trial, the definition of WP:PRIMARYNEWS}} clarified with {{tq|*news reports can be and often are primary sources. deep investigations that give commentary can be secondary, but the entire trial section is just play by play trial proceedings. thing happened, justice system says thing happened, defense says thing - with no commentary, just the event}}. Per the third, you cannot say a discussion is absent or dormant if you did not, in fact, start the talk page discussion, following a clear explanation of an issue you apparently disagree with in an edsum. So none of the conditions for removal were met, and the templates should go back until a consensus is reached. I'll put it back shortly.

You state in your edsum {{tq|This article does *not* rely on primary sources, and simply being a newspaper or other periodical source does not satisfy WP:PRIMARYNEWS. The vast majority of periodical sources in this article include analysis of the event, so they are secondary sources.}} This does not appear to be correct. Trial reporting is reporting, and there is no synthesis in these reports. Someone talking around a subject is not analysis as is meant in the field of historiography. Someone taking a set of sources, and analysing these sources to produce a synthesis is such analysis. We don't have that here.{{pb}}However we are in a much better position than we were las year. There is an excellent secondary source. I have mentioned it a few times:

• Coffey, J. and Moritz J. (2024) Unmasking Lucy Letby. London: Seven Dials

That book is an excellent secondary source (albeit some of its information is also primary, depending what question you ask of it. But such is the fun of working with sources). And had that been available when this article was written, I would suspect the structure of this article would be quite different. What I find surprising is that no one has used that source at all yet. I'd do it myself, having read it, but if I did, I think I would be replacing a lot of this article - and I don't really have the time for that. I would, however, recommend reading the book. It is very good, albeit it is already out of date in some parts. If we addressed the primary sources template by making use of actual secondary sources, the article would be greatly improved. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 19:51, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:Thank you for opening some semblance of a discussion.

:First, I disagree with you that PARAKANYAA's comment identified a real issue with the sources. Rather, as you quote, he claimed the content of only the trial section read like a "play by play report on the trial". Those claims are not about the sources themselves. I removed it because it fails prong 2 based on that.

:The reason I removed it again is because again, no clear issue has been identified. Rather, it is vaguely claiming the article is relying on periodicals and therefore WP:NEWSPRIMARY. Without a single example, one has to question the validity of the claim. This is a large article with hundreds of references. It is difficult or even impossible for someone to address the tag without clear direction as to the issue. Which sources are we claiming are primary and where are they relied upon is necessary to address such a tag. Absent that information, it is just a disruption to editors and to readers.

:Second, PARAKANYAA did not specify, at all, where there is undue weight and to which ideas. This tag has been repeatedly added with no context, followed by a request for such context, and no response beyond WP:I don't like it. Say ocean again (talk) 18:47, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

::And section tags and inline tags would be extremely helpful if these are actual issues, absent a talk page entry (which would still be preferred to help editors address the tags). Say ocean again (talk) 18:49, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:Also, I'm not sure that book is a secondary source, Sirfurboy, Moritz was one of the only reporters allowed in the courtroom and I read it to be overwhelmingly her account of Letby and the case as an insider and investigative reporter. It was quite good, though. Say ocean again (talk) 19:10, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

::To write a book that is not a memoir you basically have to synthesize a variety of different sources - without reading the book, it would be astounding if they managed to write a whole book about a crime case without conducting interviews with others, looking at the evidence, consulting other primary records. Even if one of those sources is their own experience, we probably wouldn't be writing about their personal experience in this article, so for the rest it is secondary. For Wikipedia's purposes I don't think we need to get this deep into the weeds of secondary vs primary though PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:I am more ambivalent about what constitutes a primary source (for Wikipedia's purposes) in the context of journalism than you, a lot (particularly sources that retrospect) are secondary. A lot of the news sourcing on Letby is to some degree secondary, but trial reporting is not and particularly egregious in that it is uniformly just recycling what the defense/prosecution/state says and just quoting people with almost no analysis from the reporter.

:Particularly in recent cases where we have few big lengthy sources but know it is notable, it is fine to use primary sources to some extent - my problem is when we have a lot of sources, it becomes a question of how much we are using them. The extent of this detail, all of which is based on recent reporting, seems an issue of WP:UNDUE weight. The trial and safety of the convictions section are the problems in this respect. We could easily retain the broad strokes of these but with more encyclopedic summaries. The problem is less the source and more how we are using them. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:@Sirfurboy I have had a look at the Coffey & Moritz source after having been introduced to this case by the Wikipedia article today, and I agree that it makes sense to cite for the reasons given.

:To elaborate on what seems to have been given undue weight in this Wikipedia article so far, the lengthy introduction dedicates a lot of words to the controversies surrounding the evidence presented but does not make it clear at all who holds what stance. General statements are made about the perspectives of “medical professionals,” for example, which can be unhelpful or even misleading here since the people who brought this case to light, the perpetrator/defendant, witnesses, consultants, and a number of commentators can all be described as medical professionals.

:In the body of the article, something brought up in the Coffey & Moritz book that seems quite significant is that the retrial for one of the attempted murders was focused on the eyewitness account of a physician. It did not hinge on an assessment of the baby's condition after the time in the company of Letsby. It is not obvious from the Wikipedia article that this is the case, given much of the content following the summary of the retrial seems to focus on rebuttals to claims regarding babies’ cause of death. Letsby’s convictions and sentencing have been advanced on the basis of details which go beyond these claims however.

:This article could also use a thorough combing over for information that is unnecessary to the overall topics summarized. It makes sense to give a detailed timeline of events, but do we really need to know that Lucy Letby holidayed in Ibiza specifically? (In fairness, these are the kinds of details the British press is known for fixating on.) عُثمان (talk) 05:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

::If you're new to the topic I'd be careful about relying so heavily on one source. Judith Moritz is a partisan in the ongoing debate, so it wouldn't be a good idea to lean so heavily on her output. Partly for that reason I strongly disagree with sirfurboy's very narrow definition of secondary, which would give that book such priority. DominicRA (talk) 22:54, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

:::Judith Moritz believes Letby is guilty. Coffey, on the other hand, leans the other way, recognising significant doubt. He argues that where there is such doubt, and if Letby is exonerated one day, one wouldn't want to be on the side that refused to hear appeals or consider the matter. Coffey, more than Moritz, presents the case that the trial was not full and fair. If you think the book is all in Moritz's voice, you can't have read it very closely. Have you read it?{{pb}}But, of course, we handle all secondary sources carefully. A secondary source contains a synthesis of the primary sources, but that does not mean the source is unbiased. Quite the contrary. Any historian is aware that secondary sources may also be occasioned documents, and that they will reflect the views and biases of the author as they make their thesis. One can defend a thesis, and publish a work, but that does not mean that the thesis is irrefutable. But it is not a narrow definition of a secondary source that gives this book priority. Rather it is the nature of this secondary source that makes it excellent. It is written by two authors who have been intimately involved in the case from the start, and who have interviewed all the actors. They are experts on the matter, and they have drawn together material in their work that describes what happened, and also discusses and gives serious consideration to the doubts. That is what makes it excellent.{{pb}}And to be clear, there is no narrow determination of secondary sources, and neither is there such a thing as secondary sources "for Wikipedia's purposes". Wikipedia uses sources for more than one purpose. For notability it needs sources to show that people have considered this notable enough to examine the matter, such that an encyclopaedic article can be written. Sources also get used for the separate matter of deciding what is due in an article (such as deciding what opinions are significant), and they get used for verification of matters and facts. {{pb}}The question of whether sources are primary or secondary also cannot always be answered simply. Moritz & Coffey is certainly a secondary source, but as I already said, it contains information that is primary, depending on the question asked. For instance, to take an obvious one, when Moritz asserts her belief that Letby is guilty, it is primary for her opinion on the matter. But it is, in general, secondary. We have other secondary sources. The documentary, Lucy Letby: The Nurse Who Killed, is a secondary source (but look who the reporter and producer are)[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q7dl]. Documentaries are secondary sources, but, if you quote an interviewee from the documentary, that is primary for their opinion, of course. Again, it depends on the question asked. Rachel Aviv's article is secondary for matters of the case, but primary for Aviv's view. It is generally a secondary source though. There is a synthesis there. but despite being a secondary source, it is another one that must be used with caution. Just as Moritz's thesis is refutable, so is Aviv's. But really, with the above cautions, there should be no resistance to using Coffey and Moritz to some extent in this article. Indeed, a failure to do so looks reprehensible. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Agree with Sirfurboy on sourcing: we should certainly be moving away from immediate news reporting to sources like Coffey & Moritz. DominicRA leans heavily on using the Telegraph, whose partisan lean on the topic is very clear. Bondegezou (talk) 08:49, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::I've used sources from several different publications. I'm quite aware that some authors appear to have a bias, and Sarah Knapton is one. Judith Moritz is another. It's fine to use some output from both of them. They've both published secondary and primary material.

:::::WP:PRIMARY lists the ways in which primary sources can/can't be used. If anyone sees a violation of those general rules, they should amended that part of the article. I think that's a more productive way of dealing with the issue (if there is one) than making general statements about too much primary sourcing in the talk page. DominicRA (talk) 16:57, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

::::I didn't need an essay on what constitutes secondary vs primary. Though I appreciate that it represents a more nuanced view of the topic than what you've said previously. My point was quite clearly that the other editor shouldn't rely soley on the book as a guide to the topic and that it shouldn't be used alone as a guide to structure the entire article, as you had suggested.

::::{{tq|there should be no resistance to using Coffey and Moritz to some extent. Indeed, a failure to do so looks reprehensible.}} You're fighting an imagined foe. No one has said the source should be excluded. Certainly not me. And no one has prevented you from using it yourself. DominicRA (talk) 15:51, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

::I would like to make an amendment to my original comment--the Ibiza detail is actually more important than I had understood as it is part of establishing the timeline of events as they relate to Letby's absence or presence at work عُثمان (talk) 19:06, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

retired Supreme court judge, Jonathan Sumption published an article in The Times "why I believe Lucy Letby is probably innocent" [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/jonathan-sumption-why-lucy-letby-innocent-znxqx78zh] I guess this is worth mentioning. Jazi Zilber (talk) 12:58, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:I don't see the need. It's a primary source effectively (see preceding discussion) and doesn't tell us anything new. Bondegezou (talk) 08:51, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

::Haven't actually read it but there is now [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/30/lucy-letby-probably-innocent-lord-sumption-thirlwall-murder/ secondary reporting in RS] on Sumption's view. Samuelshraga (talk) 11:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks for finding that. The Telegraph are really pushing on Letby being innocent! I don't think it's encyclopaedic (see WP:NOTNEWS) to report each comment of support for (or against) Letby. I'd still leave it out, personally. If others feel it should be included, we could have some text like, "Other high profile supporters of a review include Lord Sumption, a, b, c..."? Bondegezou (talk) 14:06, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Currently I've seen his position republished in the Sun, Daily Mail and Telegraph (only the latter of which is an RS). But he's a significant enough figure that an RS will have a news item just reporting on his opinion (rather than mentioning his opinion in the context of an item on the Letby case).

::::I think for now the case for inclusion is arguable, but if more RS report on his opinion, or start to reference his position when reporting on the Letby case, I think the scale should tip towards inclusion. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::We don't include everything that is covered by reliable sources, however. WP:NOTNEWS applies. We're writing an encyclopaedia article, not a day-by-day account of every time anyone says anything about Letby. Bondegezou (talk) 10:02, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::And I wouldn't think the Telegraph is RS, particularly for anything to do with science, for which it pumps out disinformation in multiple directions. Bon courage (talk) 08:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the English could be improved:

"She went for another training placements ..."

"Got an appointment", instead of "Was appointed" etc. Nicransby (talk) 11:58, 22 April 2025 (UTC)