Why her work matters in this case
Long before the Panel convened, long before the broadsheets began covering the case, and long before Sir David Davis MP brought it to the Commons, science4justice.nl was publishing detailed, technically rigorous analyses of the Letby medical evidence. The site became the first public scientific archive where a reader could see the insulin immunoassay critique worked out to laboratory-protocol detail, with citations to the primary manufacturer documentation and peer-reviewed literature.
Dr Adams’s work sits in a distinctive position. Unlike the Panel, she was working in public in near-real time, as the trial unfolded and immediately after verdict. The independent expert reports that followed — the Joint Insulin Report, the Panel’s own biochemistry contributions — build on foundations her early analyses laid down.
Professional background
- Biomedical scientist; research background in laboratory medicine.
- Founder and principal author of the science4justice.nl archive, an open-access scientific resource on contested medical-forensic cases.
- Detailed published analyses on the Letby insulin evidence, including the Roche Cobas immunoassay methodology, the specific Royal Liverpool laboratory protocols in force, the documented false-positive literature, and the sample-handling chain-of-custody issues.
What science4justice.nl establishes
Her work on the site documents:
- Every known false-positive case in the Roche Cobas immunoassay’s published literature, with citations.
- The specific Royal Liverpool laboratory protocol change between 2010 and 2012 — the 2012 protocol explicitly stating the lab could not diagnose exogenous insulin, the 2010 protocol (in force at the time of the Letby testing) not stating this.
- The clinical conditions other than exogenous insulin administration that generate high-insulin-low-C-peptide readings: auto-antibodies (transient from a diabetic mother or chronic), sepsis, adrenal suppression, liver disease, kidney disease, specific drugs, alcohol.
- The chain-of-custody failures in the Letby sample handling: gel tubes, delayed centrifugation, ambient-temperature storage — each sufficient on its own to compromise a forensic reading.
- The physiological implausibility of the reported numerical insulin value (4,657 pmol/L) on the Crown’s own theory of a 0.6 ml spike into a slow-running TPN bag.
- A line-by-line comparison of the Lee & Tanswell 1989 paper’s air-embolism diagnostic criteria against the descriptions used at trial.
How her work intersects with the Panel
Several Panel members and other independent experts have publicly or privately cited science4justice.nl as an early public-interest reference archive. The October 2023 piece “The insulin question” is still widely linked as the canonical plain-English summary of why the Letby insulin evidence fails a forensic standard.
The Panel’s February 2025 report, the Joint Insulin Report, the Panel’s Additional 10 Cases report, and the October 2025 CCRC application materials all cover ground that Dr Adams’s work had mapped out in public first.