[shermantanktop]

Maybe they were poisoned, had malaria, were stabbed, and also suffocated and drowned, all at the same time?

"solves" is a silly thing to ask for in matters of probability. I think this test result adds data which shifts probabilities, and that's the best we'll get.

[themgt]

Maybe they were poisoned, had malaria, were stabbed, and also suffocated and drowned, all at the same time?

Just now learning Grigori Rasputin died of malaria.

[bell-cot]

> "Solves" is a silly thing to ask for...

Maybe? If testing of their remains had revealed (say) LD95 of arsenic, or some other poison well-known at the time, it'd be pretty reasonable to call that "solved". (At least as to their cause of death. It wouldn't establish the perpetrator.)

[shermantanktop]

The justice system works in binary: legal vs. illegal, guilty vs. innocent, admissible vs. not. The whole process is dominated by driving uncertainty into binary certainty, with threshold tests at every turn.

Reality as experienced in the moment is often binary (I am walking vs sitting) but is often murkily probabilistic (am I am tired because I am jet-lagged, or because I flew to give a high stakes presentation?).

History is also a mix, but facts become murkier the older they are.

So sure, LD95 sounds pretty much like we would have solved it. But if enough people wanted them dead, it’s not impossible that a lethal dose could coincide with some other cause of death. That could be my defense if I were on trial for it.