h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi potholer,

you know, i wondered about that too. firstly, quincy's from the greater new york area and said he'd worked in suburbs, and in the city, and all different places in between. where he lives now is anyone's guess. he said he was on "sabbatical" and said it was sunny. so that could be a lot of places.

the editors never had any trace on his location, and said so.

i went and researched domestic violence, and autopsy stats, and i couldn't find anything to back what he said up, in one place, but i got bits and pieces that did make it work out.

most of the bodies that are autopsied are male, because the coroner's office is a branch of law enforcement, and most violent deaths are males. it figures that of all the female deaths by violence or under suspicious circumstances, that out of the percentage that end up being actually autopsied, there would be at least one a day who showed signs of domestic violence. that's not to say the /all/ did. that one female autopsied every day showed signs of ongoing violence, i can believe, given they already died under suspicious circumstances or by violence.

suicides, from the websites i looked at the suicide rate for battered women is really high though no one agrees how high, but i can see that too, you know? it makes a sort of pathetic sense, and the same goes for alcohol and drug abuse, because it dulls the pain. the drunk driving statistics in the usa are unbelievable to people from europe. it's in the top five causes of death for adults, or something absurd like that. the new laws aren't making any difference either. people here drink and do drugs and then they drive, and then a lot of them die. some of them do it on purpose but most of them probably didn't. but if a battered woman's an alcoholic and drives and dies, she'll end up having an autopsy, and there it is.

anorexia nervosa is real complicated. i've known a few girls who had it. by the stuff i read, it's almost a one-to-one correlation with some kind of home violence. so he could really have seen one female corpse every day that showed signs of domestic violence. this isn't something i've studied, but the sites are there and i just went to the library and browsed around. there's heaps of information. it sounds to me like what he said probably was not an exaggeration.

why would it be? the world is full of mean people.

uh-oh. now i've talked about domestic violence. i'm lekz. the lekx police are gonna get me. gotta

On the anorexia front, given the typical age of anorexia sufferers, I'd have thought any abuse that had happened would be more likely to be classed as child abuse, rather than adult/adult domestic violence.

There don't seem to be many anorexia websites claiming a 1:1 link with physical abuse. When mention of causes is made, direct physical abuse is just one of the one mentioned. Mental abuse, stress, bullying, overprotective or unloving parents or fitness obsession don't leave scars on bodies. Even when physical abuse has taken place, however serious the mental scars, I'm not sure it could always leave obvious evidence of *incessant* abuse.


I was under the impression that a significant proportion of suicides would be due to mental ilness?

On the Denver/NYC front, other people do seem to be under the impression Quincy is in the Denver area, though I haven't seen the source of those impressions. Most searches for 'Quincy' in conversations seem to come back to one of these threads, and I can't really trawl through all of them.

Whatever/wheverer, I'd assume that a pathologist can't get through very many bodies in the course of a day - 2? 3?. Having at least one unambiguously abused female every day seems doubtful, even on average. Having at least one every single day without exception seems quite unlikely.

The extent and vehemence of the claims made seems to be at odds with the extreme caution I'd expect from a pathologist. Possibly it's a case of someone going over the top here to vent steam when they have to be more cautious in their professional life, but it does seem a little odd.

I guess I'll have to ask a mate whose mother is a pathologist to seek her opinions.

Remember that we are talking about a forensic pathologist here. A medical pathologist is involved in entirely different sorts of work.

Let us know what you hear.

Barton

The forensic/medical point is well made.

I do stress that :-

I was only pointing out what I'd read that struck me as odd.
The postings in the thread were the only things I'd seen that seemed odd.
I can quite understand why anyone might have been tempted to exaggerate a little, given the context of the conversation.


That's why I posted here rather then in the Ban Quincy thread. I haven't personally seen anything that would lead be to support a ban, or even a suspension.

If I come across anyone (h2g2 or anywhere else) who seems to overstress things on occasion, I just dial up my skepticism, while bearing in mind I could be wrong.

It *could* be possible that the stress-related disorder that evidently forced Quincy into his current 'sabbatical' is, in one way, manifested by a tendency to overly-broad and less-precise statements than 'normal'. We are talking about someone who has endured - and probably continues to re-live - one of the most unimaginably horrific events in recent Western 'civilization'. I, for one, would be loath to expect total pre-disaster self-control from anyone going through that. S**t: I hardly expect that from anyone at any time... Maybe we ought to cut 'im some slack?

And I can assure anyone who's interested that 100% of the anorexia sufferers I'm related to show scars of lifelong abuse - both those by others and those self-inflicted. Anorexia *is*abuse.

-7rob7

To me, broad or imprecise would normally imply words like most / few / some / many, rather than all / 100% / every single one, but I guess different people react in different ways. Personally, I have a habit of excessive use of words like tend, maybe, possibly, perhaps, and I suppose that possibly might influence my judgement somewhat.
I take your point about Quincy's stated experiences, (to add to my initial comments about the context of the conversation).

'Scars' can be a potentially misleading term when applied in the context of pathology.
Mental scars, however caused and however horrific for the person bearing them, aren't really visible post-mortem. I don't see how self-inflicted injuries which are part of the whole self-harm package can provide real evidence of the original causes of a case of anorexia.

However, I do accept that most people who die as a result of anorexia and who actually are autopsied are likely to be seen by a clinical pathologist, so maybe the cases that do get referred to forensic specialists are the ones over whom there is some doubt, and I can see how people (pathologists or anyone else) dealing with a specific subsection of victims may see a different distribution of causes than those that pertain to the population as a whole, but I was still quite surprised by the 100% figure for clear incessant physical abuse quoted by Quincy.


The reason I posted originally at that there seems to be debate elsewhere over the (secret, offline?) reasons why people may think Quincy!=Quincy, or Quincy==LeKZ, and I took the opportunity to stick my neck out and mention some of the things I'd seen as somewhat strange to see what other people thought.

Given the question

Do you think this piece of writing is more likely to have been written by
a) a practicing male pathologist.
b) (based on what I've read here) a female known to have medical knowledge, a profound personal concern about the issues of sexual abuse / domestic violence, and the willingness to take on other identities in order to get their point (however worthy) across.

On the balance of probabilities, I'd have to plump for b) simply because there are things I have read that seem inconsistent with a), and nothing that is inconsistent with b), though of course, finding things that *are* inconstsient with b) could be rather difficult.

Assuming Quincy *is* Quincy, he'd understand how his words could be interpreted that way, if that is the question being asked.

that said, if you added the answer
c) someone else
the question becomes rather intractable without more information, and maybe that's the heart of the problem.

Personally, I think not banning is the best option - even if Quincy is another side of LeKZ, evidence seems likely to acumulate rapidly, and enough people will be watching to ensure that any OTT postings are yikesed and reported quite swiftly.

Hi Potholer -

I wasn't disagreeing with you, just wanted to add some more stuff to think about. When *I* get passionate/agitated/het up about something, I get less precise by resorting to extremes ("This is *always* the case! 100% of the time you'll find *this*!) because it is easier than a thoughtful, reasoned comment. Since it's something I do, I figured maybe it was something others might do, as well.

And I was referring specifically to physical scars. If the situation with which I am familiar ever wound up in a pathologist's lab - which (to illustrate my point from above) will never happen while there's breath left in my body - the conclusion could go a couple of ways: the anorexia caused the emotional turmoil leading to self-inflicted scarring, or the anorexic was the victim of scarring abuse by others. It's all abuse, and I'm unsure how anyone could determine the source after-the-fact without additional information. Just a point.

As to your 'A vs. B' postulation, *I* don't think that there's any significance to the assumed maleness of Quincy in terms of hir concerns about sexual/domestic abuse. To me, they are both " ...known to have medical knowledge, (and) a profound personal concern about the issues of sexual abuse / domestic violence..." Thus far, we do not know if Quincy is given to taking on other identies to get a 'point across', but that is impossible to know with the information we have.

So *I* would have to conclude that Quincy is perfectly capable of making the posts attributed to LeKZ. Which proves nothing regarding the allegations of indenticality (I also like to invent words...) but, I hope, sheds some little doubt on the 'impossibility' of Quincy *not* being LeKZ.

(Hope I'm coming across as confrontational. I enjoy good debate.) (duh)

The a/b answers relate specifically to do with (other) people thinking that Qunicy==LeKZ. The c) answer covers a multitude of possibilities, which is what makes the whole thing rather difficult.

Also, there's a valid debate about whether the balance of probabilities is the relevant standard of decision.

potholer,

i /only/ logged on to respond to this, because i've re-read that post any number of times, and the follow-up he added. as i read it, he said that:

on no given day in 22 years as a forensic (law enforcement and detective type) pathologist,

of all the female corpses who were there for autopsy with violence (self-inflicted or otherwise, and including substance abuse, car wrecks, and anorexia),

was there not at least one who showed evidence of physical abuse.

it's the triple negative that's the problem. that's why i had to break it up like that. so in plainer english, that would mean "every day there's at least one female domestic violence victim in the morgue, even if domestic violence wasn't the legal or official cause of death." i sure believe that's true!

as for anorexia, it's a stupid media stereotype that it only affects teenage girls who want to look like models. i've known a few. i've gone to a couple of their funerals, too. yeah, it's got to do with sexual violence, but since when did sexual violence necessarily limit itself to only rape? besides, quincy mentioned micro-tears to the mucus membranes in the genitalia, anus, and throat. that's physical evidence in the corpse of abuse. if there's scarring, it would be long term.

i hate it when things that should be obvious aren't. it wasn't to me either. so i kept after it, instead of jumping to any conclusions, because i believe he's a forensic pathologist. he deals in dead bodies from crime, car wrecks, when people insist on inquests, and if there's any reason at all for the law to be involved.

most of forensic pathology is lab work and really fine detail. i don't doubt a man who's citing hairline fractures that are partly healed. i didn't get the impression lekz was a doctor. i could be wrong. why everybody's so darn sure they're onto something if it looks like it might be to the man's disadvantage, and ignores details like how he described the actual morgue i don't get.

i'm gone. i haven't got the stomach for this. i shouldn't have even looked here.


wfg

Regarding Quincy's statements such as :

"In twenty-two years, you know what I have NEVER, EVER seen? One single day go by WITHOUT at least one female corpse who, whatever the Official Cause of Death, was obviously a victim of domestic violence.

"Never, not once, in twenty-two years, has there not been a female corpse whose skeleton showed cracked ribs, or hairline fractures to other bones, missing teeth, cracked vertebrae...[as the result of physical abuse]"

"No, not "one a day". NEVER, ever, NONE. Always at LEAST one. One is unrealistically light in a busy morgue."

I interpreted the negatives the same way, but I took the impression that Quincy was saying either
a) That he'd personally worked on (or personally seen someone else working on) at least one such obvious case of non-self-inflicted violence per day, with the secondary implication that it was a different case every day.
or
b) That he'd never seen a single day go by without one such obviously non-self-abused corpse arriving at the morgue.


Your impression seems to be that at any time, there was at least one physically abused (self inflicted or otherwise) female corpse either
a) somewhere in the morgue
or
b) awaiting or undergoing autopsy
which is clearly an easier condition to satisfy, depending as much on how long victim's bodies would stay in the building as on their arrival rate.


The use of the word 'seen' caused me to think that it was something Quincy observed daily that was being described, rather than just his knowledge of what was in the building.
Also, I'd interpreted "light", and "[not] one single day go by" to relate to throughput or workload, rather than presence in the morgue.


At the risk of giving an an analogy that some may find trivialising, (which is difficult to avoid in the circumstances) :-

If, when I was working as a sysadmin, I'd said
"There hasn't been a day gone by in the last month when I haven't seen a PC messed up by a dumb user"
I'd take that to mean I'd directly observed at least one different PC every day. A PC that had been messed up days ago that was sitting in a corner of my office awaiting attention, or in the middle of repair wouldn't count in my calculations, except the first day I saw it.

If I'd said
"There hasn't been a day gone by in the last month when I haven't had a PC sitting in my office that had been messed up by a dumb user"
It would be a different matter.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'm *right* in my interpretation, but that's *why* I took the impression that I did.


The 'looking like models' stereotype for anorexia does seem to be an easy one for the media to dredge up every now and again.
That said, it *does* seem to be teenage girls who are most at risk - an average age of 17 is widely quoted. I suppose that may depend on how likely adults sufferers are to become included in official figures, compared to children who are under the care of their parents, and whether the average is actually an average or a median.