2014 Ripper Conference In The U.K.

[Howard Brown]

I recall Paul Begg mentioning it would be nice to have academicians participating on the Forums...but I don't remember him stating that they're important to the field.

Thats what I recall in relation to this site.

[Lynn Cates]

some day

Hello Gary. Thanks.

Perhaps some day this will all get sorted out--and ALL the excuses gone.

Cheers.
LC

[Paul]

Seriously? I'm not going to answer that.

Seriously? Yes, seriously. I have from time to time been quite critical of academic involvement in the subject, pointing out that academics tend exclude non-academics as they did from the book that accompanied the Docklands exhiition and the conference in Philly a year or two back. So, yes, seriously tell me. I think you've dreampt it.

No more or less relevant than all other posts on this thread of late. As for 'mixing it', your boy P has that down pretty well. I couldn't compete.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Mr P isn't my boy and that's a pathetically silly comment to make, but it's just dodging the question.

[Paul]

I recall Paul Begg mentioning it would be nice to have academicians participating on the Forums...but I don't remember him stating that they're important to the field.

Thats what I recall in relation to this site.

Thank you Howard.

[Gary Barnett]

Hello Gary. Thanks.

Perhaps some day this will all get sorted out--and ALL the excuses gone.

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

Let's hope so.

Gary

[Maria Birbili]

Incidentally, since Paul, Mr. P., and perhaps others, think that academics are so important to the field and should be treated with TLC, then why have Lynn and Maria (both academics) been treated the way they have on this thread?

No worries, I'm not feeling like I've been "mistreated" or anything in this thread, and neither has Lynn, I'd say.

But critical thinking or reading isnt part of your repertoire now is it?

You keep typing this every few posts, but FYI, this is NOT an argument. I assure you it's not impressing anyone. And neither does Louhelainen's conduct after his research has been proved erroneous.

Lets be clear about this: what has this to do with whether or not the Dr has distanced himself from the interpretation of his work by Edwards?

Er, again, not.

Comparing Louhelainen to Keith Skinner: Skinner conducts his research, gets paid, then backs off, leaves the author work independently. Thus he can reasonably claim not to be legally involved in the content of the book. Skinner did not appear on conferences and interviews along with Patricia Cornwell, plugging her books.

[CGP]

The key factor to get to the bottom of is, what significance a 13 marker match of mdna has? How closely can such a match identify an individual?

What you wrote originally about the "13 markers" was this:
"Dr Jari's talk mentioned that if there are 13 markers in a evidence sample that match a comparative sample of MDNA, then that is enough for a court to accept that the two samples can be regarded as being genetically linked."

I think that is clearly a reference to the 13 markers for nuclear DNA used in the FBI's CODIS system, which are indeed accepted by US courts for identification purposes.

You then went on to say:
"They claim to have that link for Eddowes."

The question is what that might mean. Obviously there is no nuclear DNA match for Eddowes, because the Eddowes match was based on mitochondrial DNA.

So presumably some kind of analogy is being drawn between the 13 nuclear DNA markers and some aspect of the Eddowes match. But what kind of analogy? There are no standard "markers" for mitochondrial DNA analogous to those used for nuclear DNA. What people do is either a full sequence of the whole molecule (about 16,000 base positions) or just the hypervariable regions (about 1000 base positions). Then they compare to the standard reference sequence and note the variations from that sequence.

But we know that the Eddowes match wasn't based on anything like the whole sequence. It was based on just one short segment - one of seven segments from the hypervariable regions. So perhaps a sequence only 100-200 base positions long was matched.

There might be 13 variations from the reference sequence in the whole molecule, but far fewer than that would be expected for a small segment like that. So it's very difficult to guess what might have been meant by these "13 markers". Unless it's explained what was meant, I think it's fruitless to speculate.

[Tom_Wescott]

I recall Paul Begg mentioning it would be nice to have academicians participating on the Forums...but I don't remember him stating that they're important to the field.

Thats what I recall in relation to this site.

Same thing. This site is 'Jack the Ripper forums', so academics participating on the forums is participating in the field, is it not? And Paul, you've discussed this at different times throughout the years, both very recently and in the past on Casebook. I believe the two of us very recently exchanged posts on the topic on a shawl thread.

By 'your boy', I simply meant that you and Mr. P have made quite a team on this thread, whether by chance or design. It's not a derogatory term unless being associated with Mr. P makes it so to you.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Howard Brown]

This site is 'Jack the Ripper forums', so academics participating on the forums is participating in the field, is it not?
-Tom Wescott-

Its a little different Tom.
You mentioned Paul stating it was 'important' for them to participate.
I pointed out that he said it would be 'nice' or something along those lines...but not necessarily important that they do.

[Tom_Wescott]

This site is 'Jack the Ripper forums', so academics participating on the forums is participating in the field, is it not?
-Tom Wescott-

Its a little different Tom.
You mentioned Paul stating it was 'important' for them to participate.
I pointed out that he said it would be 'nice' or something along those lines...but not necessarily important that they do.

That's just semantics. Point is, Paul has talked about some sort of Academic peer review or whatnot in the past and how we should attract academics in various fields. Seemed to me the idea is important to him or else why hold on to it for years and keep bringing it up? I don't fault him for it, though it's odd he now says he never said these things

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Maria Birbili]

I have from time to time been quite critical of academic involvement in the subject, pointing out that academics tend exclude non-academics as they did from the book that accompanied the Docklands exhiition and the conference in Philly a year or two back.

I completely agree with this stance.

In a criminology conference I still hope to be able to organize in Paris in a few years, I'll be inviting a couple academics along with esteemed older Ripperologists plus Ripperologists from the younger generation. One of the few academics to participate might be a guy from the University of London who has done research on how the press influences police investigations, which I think is an interesting question to ponder in relation to the Whitechapel murders.

Plus I'll invite some French criminologist to speak about French police structure, and possibly someone (if I found noone, I might do it myself) to talk about Eugène François Vidocq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_François_Vidocq).

Btw, there will be no fee for delegates attending, and I plan to try on getting some funding, which I'm not promising, but it might even work, since I just got ample funding confirmed today for a conf I'm organizing in Frankfurt in 2016 about critical editions.

[Tom_Wescott]

Look at this post from a month ago where I ask why Paul and others feel academia is so important. Paul replies. A couple posts later even Debs asks what Paul and Mr P are on about. So I don't imagine I'm the only one who's noticed.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=406

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Paul]

Look at this post from a month ago where I ask why Paul and others feel academia is so important. Paul replies. A couple posts later even Debs asks what Paul and Mr P are on about. So I don't imagine I'm the only one who's noticed.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=406

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Tom
I said I would like academics to treat Ripperology seriously. I went one further, I said I'd like Ripperology to be treated seriously. Period. That you somehow manage to read that and screw it round to me thinking academics are so important to the field that they should be treated with tender loving care is bizarre. Scewing my words is also a habit of yours, complained of several times in the past.

[Tom_Wescott]

Tom
I said I would like academics to treat Ripperology seriously. I went one further, I said I'd like Ripperology to be treated seriously. Period. That you somehow manage to read that and screw it round to me thinking academics are so important to the field that they should be treated with tender loving care is bizarre. Scewing my words is also a habit of yours, complained of several times in the past.

Clearly I didn't read anything into that response since I asked the question before you made it. I asked the question because of years of observations I've made on the boards, just as you've made the observation over the years that I 'screw your words'. We'll have to agree to disagree on both counts.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Maria Birbili]

I think that with the "TLC" comment Tom was simply making a funny about Mr Poster, who keeps accusing everyone disagreeing with him of being "unable to read", while his own posts are chock-full of typos. :-)


I personally think that a symbiosis* of academia and Ripperology would be a good thing, and would help Ripperology move further away from commercialism.


(* How's that for academic speak?)