Can Science Prove Michael Jackson's Innocence? | Leaving Neverland

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question is can science prove that Michael Jackson was innocent another question I've received is does science prove he's innocent but that's a different question I'll explore that a little bit in this video now when I say science here in this question I'm really talking about the scientific method and specifically a portion of the scientific method called hypothesis testing now I've covered this topic before a little bit like I've looked at the facts of this case before not really from the perspective of hypothesis testing and this is a controversial case we see allegations of around for many years and then this leaving Neverland movie comes out and it really focuses on two accusers and again like I said I did a video on this before and I really looked at how the evidence in detail I came to the conclusion there's just no way to know but in weighing all the evidence I leaned a little bit more toward innocence than I do guilt some agree with me some disagree with me but either way the question kind of comes up can science really prove he was innocent or for that matter can it prove he was guilty now it's really interesting about this question is when it's applied to a case like the Michael Jackson case or situation it's certainly something that's compelling but really you could apply this logic to any case like this so this isn't really specific necessarily to what happened to Michael Jackson so back to the question consience really proves something like this well the short answer is no and really the long answer is yes right so this gets a little complex and demands a bit of an understanding of how hypothesis testing works and really how the scientific method works in general so in terms of the short answer which is no science typically can't prove a negative so I'll give you an example there's an unusual word from the discipline of physics called syzygy and it means when like planets align like typically we use it to mean when the Sun the moon and the earth line I chose this word for this example because it really has no bearing on anything it's not a controversial word it doesn't engage a lot of emotions and really because it's rarely used in general so say for some reason I don't know what this reason would be again this is just hypothetical it was important that you prove that during your time in grade school in high school you never said the word syzygy can science prove that well not really right because you would have to be monitored all the time when you're in school to detect the pronunciation of that word the saying of that word and there's no way to do that there's times when you would have used the bathroom there's times when you would have moved from one classroom to another there's just simply times when it'd be very hard for somebody to have their activity record it so really it's impossible to prove that anybody didn't say that word when they were in school at some point so if it was important that you didn't say that word or to prove you didn't say that word could you actually do it with science technically no but again that's the short answer the long answer in a manner of speaking is really yes because failure to prove a positive is often functionally interpreted as proving a negative so again with this example of syzygy say you were trying to prove you never said it you interview classmates they never heard you say it there is a video of you giving a presentation in class or maybe several videos and you never mention the word in those videos maybe there's some audio recordings too you never mentioned it your papers and reports that you produced in school they're all reviewed none of them contain the word there's no record of other terms that are similar to that being used for example in a physics class or an astronomy class or maybe there's no record that you ever took a class like that so you didn't use the word orbit or momentum or velocity or again words that may be similar you deny using that word and perhaps you have a good reputation for telling the truth and also you look at evidence like your opponents may be gaining some if they proved he used the word so they have a motive for lying about you using that word syzygy so if evidence can't be presented that you've said it it's often dessous that you didn't say it so the result at least functionally is you proved your case you had a presumption of innocence and the evidence could not overwhelm that presumption but you might look at that principle the presumption of innocence and say we'll wait that's about the legal matters right that's from a court of law not science but actually many principles from the law and science they're actually the same were quite similar and science we have a principle called the null hypothesis and technically it can mean a lot of things but it's usually the hypothesis that's tested in a scientific experiment in practice the meaning of the null hypothesis is typically restricted to just a few different areas the lack of a relationship between two variables I only use the examples of depression and cognitive behavioral therapy so depression like major depressive disorder psychopathology and cognitive behavioral therapy CBT is a treatment often used for depression so the null hypothesis would say there's no relationship between those two variables for instance it also says there's no causation between two variables like receiving CBT doesn't help somebody to feel less depressed now the null hypothesis is typically tested with what we call inferential statistics so you see that word infer kind of in the word inferential and this is really a fancy way of saying that we don't have access to an entire population so I can't test everybody in the world I test a sample and I infer from that sample that's where we get inferential statistics these statistics usually generate what's called a p-value a probability value so again using this example of CBT and depression you have two groups of people say 50 people in each group one gets CBT among it's nothing the CBT group dramatically improves in terms of depression so does science tell us that CBT is effective for treating depression well to know this we'd have to test null hypothesis that the two aren't related that CBT and depression are related and let's say the statistical analysis shows us that the probability value that p-value talked about before is two percent what does that mean it means that there's a two percent chance that if the null hypothesis were true so the variables not related that this could have occurred the finding you had could have occurred by random error alone so putting this another way there's a 98% chance that the CBT actually explained the improvement in the depression now that's considered to be scientifically proved even though some people look at the word proved and think that it means you have to be a hundred percent sure and really you can't be unless you're using the entire populations that have a sample and even then they're measurement error so science doesn't really prove something a hundred percent it proves something with the degree of certainty so how do we decide how certain we need to be right this is really relevant when moving back to like the michael jackson situation well we use something called the alpha and it's a value that we determine is a cutoff value and in social sciences it's usually about five percent so if the p-value is less than five percent for example two percent like I mentioned before this means we reject the null hypothesis we reject the idea that the variables are unrelated and we accept the alternative hypothesis that says that CBT helped improve depression so now let's connect this back to this Michael Jackson situation if we reduce the principle of reasonable doubt that's the standard by which somebody is convicted they have to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if we reduce that to mathematics we see the reasonable doubt converts into a probability of around ninety percent so the jury finds a defendant guilty usually they're about 90 percent sure that person did it or more now this is fairly interesting because I mentioned in social sciences we have that 5 percent alpha which is the same more or less as being 95 percent sure so reasonable doubt that standard turns into a number fairly similar tool use as the alpha now this of course is just how the math works out when looking at reasonable doubt it doesn't speak to a specific case and again the standard isn't technically 90 percent its guilty beyond a reasonable doubt whatever that means to an individual juror so how do we apply this specifically to the Michael Jackson case he passed away in 2009 so of course this isn't a criminal case it's not a case at all there can be no finding of guilt but people can still believe he was guilty so we can apply it in this sense about how people think about this so here's how it applies I would argue that the null hypothesis is really the same thing as the presumption of innocence now presumption of innocence is a legal term and the individual who invented it was named William Blackstone he was an English jurist at least he's one of the first people that documented it and he said that it's better that 10 guilty persons escape then one innocent sufferer so what he was really saying is we need a high degree of certainty just like with what we see with the null hypothesis what do we know about the presumption of innocence well the state has the burden of proving that a crime was committed period so they have to prove that a crime actually occurred and additionally they have to approve that a defendant committed the crime so relating this back over to science depression exists right that would be what we'd have to establish first does depression really exist and then secondly the CBT help depressive symptoms improve so it's two stages it's not just that somebody commits the crime or was a treatment effective in helping a disorder another principle of the presumption of innocence is the defendant bears no burden of proof they do not have to present evidence call witnesses or testify and of course Michael Jackson can't do any of these things although technically witnesses could step up on his behalf but it doesn't need to do any of these things in order to be found not guilty or to think of him as not guilty because of course again he can't be found guilty another important point with the presumption of innocence is the fact that somebody's accused or charged is not evidence that can be considered in terms of guilt or innocence so being accused of something actually doesn't mean anything in terms of proving guilt from a scientific point of view just the fact that you're asking a question doesn't mean that you now have the answer so with all this in mind the presumption of innocence how it works its similarity to the null hypothesis where does this leave us why is it important that we know the answer to questions like this well much of the time we really need definitive answers but of course sometimes it doesn't matter if we know the truth or not in criminal trials society really does need an answer because we have a limited amount of time to figure it out and we can't let criminal behaviors just continue without being stopped now the scientific method we make our decisions based on carefully weighing evidence and we're open to changing our minds in the light of new evidence in the criminal justice system you really can't change your mind so because Michael Jackson is no longer alive many would argue this topic itself doesn't matter because whether we believe he's guilty or not no one's going to prison nothing is really going to happen but actually the Michael Jackson situation speaks to a larger social issue of how we critically analyze evidence especially in light of situations where someone can no longer defend themselves now I've already provided my opinion of course on this matter and I said again there's no way to know but I feel like there's reasonable doubt in the situation which means I would fail to reject the null hypothesis in this Michael Jackson situation however I can understand how people could be in any of the three popular categories believing he's guilty believing he's innocent and not knowing it's not a matter of good people versus bad people or illogical people versus logical people but again it just sheds light on how we apply critical thinking how certain do we need to be before we say something's true and how it's difficult sometimes to make this determination now this issue of certainty is really important science seeks to prove something it tries to determine something with a high level of and this is not ideal for every situation for example if you were gonna loan your car to somebody and then you found out there was a 1% chance they were going to steal it would you still give them the keys are they probably going to steal it no but a 1% risk is still too high it's still too great and that risk is unnecessary so somebody exactly like Michael Jackson were live today would someone be rational and saying but they don't want to leave their children with him of course because even a small risk of offending is too high so the scientific method specifically hypothesis testing is useful for some purposes but not in others so ting as to that original question the answer of course as I mentioned is both yes and no but perhaps another important question would be how certain do we need to be in various situations so if we're going to substitute for example one effective treatment for another like if we're going to replace CBT with a new experimental treatment how certain would we need to be to take away CBT and put in a new treatment well we'd have to be very certain because we know CBT is relatively effective and we could hurt people and we take that away and put in an unproven treatment but moving over to the area of crime how certain do we need to be to believe somebody's guilty of a crime while at a personal level everybody decides that for themselves just like that example with loaning somebody your car but a societal level we use science to determine if somebody's guilty of a crime because we want a high degree of certainty we want to make sure that when we accuse somebody and follow through by charging somebody that they really did it so it's not like a 1% thing a 1 percent certainty would certainly not be enough to say to somebody committed a crime we want to be very certain and I think that really speaks a lot to again how we critically analyze the situation with Michael Jackson as a society we have to decide how certain do we want to be to say that somebody actually committed a crime or committed any activity for that matter so we know whenever I talk about the Michael Jackson case there gonna be a lot of strong opinions some people agree with me or disagree with me and specifically even with the scientific method and how I conceptualize it some people will agree and disagree please put your different opinions in the comment section they really generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the Michael Jackson case and hypothesis testing to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 111,541

Keywords: Leaving Neverland, Michael Jackson, scientific method, Null Hypothesis, Presumption of Innocence, Wade Robson, James Safechuck, Dan Reed, abuse, Tom Mesereau, trial, garvin arvizo, janet arvizo, macaulay culkin, criminal charges, guilt, innocence, under oath, mental health, counseling

Id: AY-ZuFc7ALw

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2019