I rarely post about issues from outside of Spain, but my reasons for not having written anything so far about the McCann case go beyond that. I felt very uncomfortable from the beginning with their campaign to find their missing daughter Madeleine, run as it was by professional spin doctors who seem to regard the whole thing as a test of their promotional skills. I couldn't really fathom what would make a man looking for a daughter supposedly abducted in Southern Portugal go to New York on tour, and I couldn't see the usefulness of it. I also have to admit that I dislike the way in which cases like this can attract so much attention, while so many other cases of equal suffering go completely unnoticed. Anyway, I'm going to limit this post to the impact of the case here in Spain. I’m aware that this is potentially a very slippery slope; I started writing about the Madrid train bombings because of a piece of invented nonsense I saw about a washing machine timer, and ended up dedicating an entire blog to the issue. This time I will be more careful.
The other day, whilst reading a typically sensible post on the issue over at
El Siglo de las Luces, I noticed a link in the comments to a blog called
Escepticismo Criminologico which turns out to be entirely about the McCann case. The blog is written by someone called Elvira Saez de Alberola, who states that she is a professional with 15 years experience in the study of forensic science and criminology. I was almost immediately struck by the ambiguity of that description; it could mean she is a permanent student, an internationally respected expert on criminal behaviour, or just a chartered accountant with a passion for crime novels. Whatever, the way in which the blog is presented led me to expect a cool, serious, fact-based analysis of the McCann case; isn’t that what scepticism is about? Well unfortunately, that’s not what you get if you turn up at this page.
What you get instead is Elvira’s theory on the case, and it doesn’t take too long to work out that Elvira finds Gerry and Kate McCann guilty on all counts for the disappearance of their daughter. Fine, if you have facts and proof to back it up, but that is precisely what we are all lacking in this case which is still so much of a mystery for most of us. In this respect Elvira is no different from anyone else, despite whatever professional training she has, she still has to rely on the same scraps of often unreliable information emerging on the case that everyone else gets. Despite this apparent drawback she has no doubts, there are frequent assertions featuring our old friend “
I knew there was something funny about this case from the very beginning”.
Now everyone is entitled to believe what they want about the case, but what I find striking in the case of Elvira’s page is the sheer determination shared by her and many of those who comment to hold the McCanns responsible. It also emerges from reading the blog that the reasons behind this are not, ahem, entirely professional. Elvira seems visibly upset by the image of devout Catholic parents that has been presented to us over the last few months. She strikes a blow at that one by pointing out that the McCanns have used in-vitro fertilisation and therefore can be struck off the list of “
good” Catholics. If we throw out those who have used contraception too, at some point the churches might get dangerously empty. Who the hell still confuses being a good Catholic with being a good parent anyway? Perhaps the same people who confuse scepticism with speculation?
My reference earlier to the Madrid bombings was not entirely accidental; the reasoning process that Elvira uses in the presentation of her case against the McCanns is very similar to that used by the conspiracy theorists like Luis del Pino who have floated so much garbage about the train bombings. Not because she accuses the police, as Del Pino does, of having been involved in committing the crime. Far from it, Elvira currently admits no criticism at all of the police or judicial system, we’ll have to wait and see whether her stand survives a result that doesn’t suit her theory. No, the similarity comes from the methodology. You start with a hypothesis as any good scientist should, but instead of testing that hypothesis against the available evidence to see whether it holds water, you set about moulding the evidence so that it fits your hypothesis. Facts which do not support the theory are simply brushed aside as irrelevant. Any gaps in the narrative (and in this case there are many such gaps) are then filled with speculative opinion that fits perfectly into the false premises on which the hypothesis now rests. So we are treated to imaginary snippets of conversation on how the McCanns could have decided to use their medical training by administering medicine to their children to make them sleep. This may be a depressingly common approach; it is also unfortunately a bogus one.
I don't know if she has any connection in her professional life with the prosecution of alleged criminals, but with this methodology I sincerely hope not. The difference with the train bombings conspiracy theories is that there is at least the possibility that Elvira could end up being right about the case. That does not mean that the way she has arrived at her conclusions is also correct, all it will show is that her number came up when they span the wheel of probability. Any result that doesn't support her hypothesis is unlikely to lead to an admission of getting it wrong, it never does with this kind of reasoning. Indeed, with references to the lawyer the McCanns have contracted as a specialist in getting the guilty freed, perhaps she is already preparing the escape route. A curious judgement for a professional to make on a defence lawyer, there have also been many references to him having defended General Pinochet - now there was a good Catholic for you! One thing I have never bought is this kind of "
I'm a professional so my speculation is better than yours" attitude. A theory without proof remains that even when it is proposed by a Nobel Prize winner.
Yesterday, our blogging professional approvingly posted an email she had received from a Portuguese policeman on how to tell whether someone is guilty or not. The policeman informs us that someone who is unjustly accused of a crime never cries. As a criteria for judging the guilt of someone it’s almost enough to bring tears to my eyes, it’s about one step above ducking suspected witches. Whatever happened to evidence? I wonder how many innocent people have been jailed because their reaction to an accusation is not what the policeman expects it to be. Some of the comments being left by readers on an increasingly surreal blog are simply astounding. Anyway, the British can rest assured that Napoleon was wrong when he called us a nation of shopkeepers, according to many of these comments we are instead a nation of cold, distant, calculating child killers. Presumably, the man who shot his 18 month old daughter in the head a few weeks ago near Madrid did so because he was a "
hot blooded Latin". Isn't it amazing how easy life can become when you stop doing your own thinking? Many others of those who comment are full of these "
who would react this way if their daughter had been kidnapped" judgements that very few of us are ever likely to be in a position to make. One beautiful comment today compared Elvira to Agatha Christie. Indeed, file under “
F” for fiction.
Of course the behaviour of the British tabloid press has been equally pathetic, but what's new about that? The coverage in some other British papers such as the Guardian is actually considerably better than that of the Spanish press. In the age of Google Reader you quickly become aware of how much "
news" you read that is a rewrite of the same story from another source. Especially if you link to feeds from different countries. I have no theory on the case myself, there are quite simply still too many things we don't know, and the information we receive is often appallingly unreliable. Whatever I might think about the way the campaign has been organised on their behalf, if the McCanns did no harm to their daughter then I wish them no harm. Unfortunately, the backlash the campaign has produced leads many people to be far less even handed in their judgements. Over at Elvira's the case is practically closed and the lynching posse is saddled up and ready to ride. I suppose that we can at least be grateful for the virtual nature of mob law on Internet. There is a kind of grisly fascination in the way in which this feeding frenzy grows, it is tempered by the realisation of just how hugely popular this kind of exploitative stuff is. I am also aware that just by writing this post I've become part of the circus.
It’s been a long post, perhaps too long but sometimes you can’t deal with an issue in 20 lines of text. My closing question is this. Just how much impact on global warming would it have if we were to make a bonfire out of all the speculative rubbish that has been written about this case?
