Context
Since the February 2025 Shoo Lee Panel report, peer-reviewed neonatology journals have published commentary, correspondence and editorial addressing the case. This page summarises the principal strands of that professional-literature response.
Editorial commentary
Leading neonatology journals have published editorial pieces engaging with the Panel report, the insulin-evidence critique, and the air-embolism re-reading. The editorial position has been consistently supportive of the Panel’s methodology and findings. No editorial defending the Crown’s methodology has emerged.
Correspondence
Journal correspondence pages carry the specialty’s informal response. The pattern of correspondence addressing the Letby case has been heavily weighted toward support for the Panel. Senior international neonatologists have written in supporting the Panel’s methodology. No sustained body of correspondence defending the Crown’s methodology has emerged.
Institutional statements
Professional colleges and specialty societies have issued position statements on: forensic use of screening immunoassays (mass spectrometry required for forensic use of insulin results); air-embolism diagnostic criteria (the Lee 1989 paper’s criteria are specific, and non-specific skin signs do not meet them); and cluster-investigation methodology (blinded differential diagnosis required, not forensic-from-hypothesis).
Case-method articles
Peer-reviewed methodological articles have used the Letby case as an example of how forensic expert instruction should be reformed. The specialty is treating the case as a teaching case for what to do better next time.
What the literature is not saying
The professional neonatology literature is not publishing peer-reviewed material that defends the Crown’s methodology. There is no body of post-Panel peer-reviewed work defending the Lee-1989-paper-applied-to-Letby-cases reading. No body of work defending the Roche-Cobas-as-forensic-test framing. No body of work defending the shift-rota-chart methodology against the Gill/Green critique. This evidential absence is itself a signal of where professional opinion has settled.
Read alongside
Our international journal response analysis, Evidence: Panel consensus, Panel press conference (Feb 2025).