Hub · Common rhetorical dismissals
Rhetorical dismissals — and why they don’t engage the evidence
A catalogue of the recurring rhetorical moves used to dismiss the post-conviction review, each matched with an evidence-based response. Intended for readers encountering these arguments in media or on social platforms. Different from myths vs facts, which addresses substantive claims about evidence; this page addresses moves that avoid engaging evidence.
The move
"Two juries convicted her."
Invoked to suggest the question is settled.
Response
Both juries heard the evidence available in 2022-2023 and 2024. Neither heard: the February 2025 Shoo Lee Panel report, the May 2025 Joint Insulin Report, the October 2025 paediatric-pathology re-readings, the CPS January 2026 decision not to extend the prosecution pattern, or the February 2026 CCRC chair's public confirmation that review is underway. The CCRC reviews evidence that post-dates the verdicts. The Donna Anthony and Sally Clark cases also had jury verdicts; both convictions were later quashed on post-verdict expert evidence.
The post-conviction evidence arc →The move
"14 experts disagree with 1,000,000 people who heard all the evidence."
A variant of the jury-finality argument with an appeal-to-popularity overlay.
Response
The 1,000,000 figure refers to public-survey belief in guilt at the time of verdict, not to people who heard the evidence. Twelve jurors heard the evidence at each trial. The 14 Panel members (plus 17+ other independent experts) reviewed the medical evidence using the methodological standards routine in modern neonatology, after the fact. The framing compares two incommensurable things: specialist reasoning about evidence vs. aggregate public sentiment about a verdict.
Panel methodology walkthrough →The move
"If she were innocent, she would appeal in person."
Invoked to suggest her silence is admission.
Response
The direct-appeal route to the Court of Appeal was exhausted at the May 2024 refusal. The statutory route after direct-appeal refusal is the CCRC, which was filed October 2025. An applicant does not 'appeal in person' at CCRC review; the application is filed through counsel (Mark McDonald KC and team). This is standard procedure, not silence.
Appeal vs CCRC distinction →The move
"Questioning the verdict hurts the families."
Invoked to suggest that the post-conviction review is harmful.
Response
The bereaved families have not spoken with a single voice. Multiple named bereaved parents (including the mother of Babies E and F; the family of Baby K) have themselves publicly questioned the verdict. A wrongful conviction does not comfort bereaved families; it compounds the original institutional failure by preventing them from learning what actually caused their child's death. The Kennedy Report on SUDI/SUDIC protocols explicitly addresses how standard-of-care investigations serve bereaved families.
SUDI/SUDIC protocols →The move
"The Panel is a paid advocacy exercise."
Invoked to delegitimise the Panel's findings.
Response
The 14 Panel members are senior international neonatologists, several holding emeritus and full professorial appointments (Shoo Lee, Neena Modi, Minesh Khashu, Brian Darlow, Mikael Norman). None was paid for their Panel work. The Panel was convened by Dr Lee himself after he became aware his 1989 air-embolism paper was being misapplied; it is a professional response, not a retained-expert exercise. The Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report, in contrast, was formally instructed through the defence — and that instruction is standard practice in UK criminal cases.
Dr Shoo Lee biography →The move
"If there's no evidence of deliberate harm, how do you explain the cluster?"
Treats absence-of-dismissal as admission-of-harm.
Response
The question inverts the criminal standard. The prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that specific deliberate acts caused specific deaths. The defence does not have to positively identify an alternative cause for each event. But the Panel's case-by-case review does identify live natural-cause differentials for every indicted event: IVH, sepsis, NEC, thrombosis, triplet-pregnancy complications, haemophilia-related bleeding, viral outbreak, cardiovascular instability of prematurity. These are not speculative differentials — they are the standard list for acute neonatal collapse.
IVH grading differential →The move
"The experts are just statisticians — they don't understand medicine."
Invoked specifically against Gill, Fenton, Hutton, Schneps.
Response
The statistical experts do not claim medical expertise. They claim statistical expertise, and they apply it to the specific statistical claims the prosecution made. The 'one in 73 million' statistical error in the Sally Clark case was identified by statisticians, not by paediatricians. The 14-member Panel is a medical panel. The statistical critique and the medical critique are separate and convergent. The Bayesian analysis (Fenton), the selection-bias analysis (Gill), and the Royal Statistical Society's post-Clark framework (Green, Hutton) each operate on the statistical architecture of the Crown's case without needing to give medical opinions.
Prof. Richard Gill biography →The move
"The insulin is hard scientific evidence — you can't argue with chemistry."
Invoked as a standalone case against reviewing the convictions.
Response
The insulin evidence is a Roche Cobas screening immunoassay result, not a forensic mass-spectrometry result. The manufacturer's own documentation requires confirmatory mass-spectrometry testing before such a result can be used forensically. That confirmation was never performed. The UK forensic-standard laboratory (Guildford) was not used; Royal Liverpool's clinical biochemistry was. The 4,657 pmol/L Baby F reading is at a magnitude the Crown's own theory cannot physiologically produce. The May 2025 Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report sets out the full technical detail.
Evidence: insulin hook effect →The move
"The handwritten notes are a confession."
Invoked as standalone proof.
Response
The same notes contain, on the same pages, the phrases 'I haven't done anything wrong' and 'I did my best and I love them all.' Clinical-psychology specialists have characterised the full text as consistent with self-blame under sustained institutional accusation rather than admission. The Kathleen Folbigg case (Australia, exonerated 2023) established the international precedent: private reflective writings read as confession can be reinterpreted when medical causes of death are re-evaluated.
The so-called 'confessions' →The move
"The shift chart shows she was the only constant."
The prosecutorial-summary form of the statistical claim.
Response
The shift chart selected 25 events because Ms Letby was present for them. Other unexplained deaths and serious collapses on the unit during the same period, where she was not present, were not included. This is classic selection bias — the methodological error the Royal Statistical Society identified after Sally Clark. Prof. Richard Gill's analysis of the Lucia de Berk case found the identical statistical architecture. Prof. Norman Fenton's Bayesian analysis and Prof. Peter Green's RSS-framework analysis both reach the same conclusion.
Shift statistics evidence →The move
"All of this is just conspiracy theory."
Invoked as a general delegitimising move.
Response
The post-conviction critique is made by: a former UK Solicitor General (Baroness Kennedy KC); a former Justice of the Supreme Court (Lord Sumption); a sitting Conservative MP (Sir David Davis); the former president of the Royal Statistical Society (Prof. Peter Green); emeritus professors at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Warwick, Toronto, Karolinska, Otago, and Bournemouth; the Chair of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (Prof. Carl Heneghan); and senior criminal silks across the UK Bar. None of these are conspiracy-theorists. They are making professional assessments using standard methodology.
Parliamentarians and legal-figure interventions →Why this page exists
Much of what reaches readers about the Letby case on social platforms and in opinion journalism does not engage the evidence. It uses rhetorical moves — some of which are effective precisely because they sound reasonable — to dismiss engagement without addressing content. This page’s function is to allow a reader who encounters one of these moves to respond with a specific evidence-based counter and a link to the relevant primary-source material.