The court of public opinion (reading from the online newsletters and blogs) seems to have concluded that the cause of Teoh Beng Hock’s death is homicide. This conclusion was fortified by the flamboyant, but eminent Thai pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand when she opined in the inquest that the probable cause of Teoh’s death was ‘20% suicide, 80% homicide’ which prompted a second autopsy on Teoh’s remains.

Except for corroborated eye-witnessed testimonies and/or clear video footage of a crime (for eg, of several persons actually seeing the culprit struggling with Teoh by the window and then Teoh falling off), in most criminal investigation, the investigators have to construct a chain of inferences to establish whether it was homicide, suicide, accidental death or natural death.

So, what’s an inference? It’s a process by which we reach a conclusion based on corroborated evidence, in this case being the physical injuries, the events leading to the body being found, the state of mind of Teoh and that sinew that holds all these together - motive.

We cannot show, touch or see motive like anger, revenge, greed, despair or lust but we can infer. The motive in Teoh’s case could be despair or anger.

We engage in inference everyday. For example, we infer its raining when we see someone opening an umbrella. We infer the driver is inconsiderate when he doesn’t park his car within the box. Evidence or image imply, readers infer.

The truth of the matter may well be the opening of the umbrella was to protect the user from the sun; and the driver was a disabled person and hence allowed to park his car at an angle. ‘I say what I mean and I mean what I say,’ is a phrase often pontificated upon by politicians (and they say it with a straight face).

But spoken or written communication is not that simple. Almost always what we comprehend through listening or reading, we comprehend indirectly by inference. This comprehension may sometimes be muddied by biases and assumptions and finally engenders a perception, as opposed to reality, of what was said or what had happened.

For instance, we may have had a bad experience with an Indonesian worker few years ago, and should something go missing in the house, we are likely to infer that the Indonesian maid may have stolen it. Then, we also have the ‘Recency Bias’ where we tend to focus on the more recent events, that is, giving more weight to the recent happenings.

Read this story below:

‘A father and his son are travelling in the car. The car crashes into a tree killing the father and injuring the son. At the hospital, the boy needs to have surgery. Upon looking at the boy, the surgeon remarked (truthfully), ‘I cannot operate on him. He is my son.’

Our wit crackled and we asked, ‘How can this be? One biological and one adoptive father?’ We were the victim of another flawed sexist assumption that the surgeon is a male person. Yes, the surgeon was the boy’s mother.

Whether it is an inquest or a royal commission of inquiry or a criminal trial, justice is about seeking the truth. Unfortunately, Teoh’s inquest seems to be descending into a full-blooded adversarial contest.

All parties should remain circumspect and be reminded that the objective is to get to the truth. Let us not be seduced by the Nietzsche’s flawed, post-modernist seminal pronouncement: ‘Truth, like morality, is relative. There are no facts, only interpretations’.

Sorry Mr Nietzsche, you are wrong. Truth is an absolute, not relative.

I trust the inquest will continue to be conducted in an impartial and objective manner where the coroner will serrate through all the layers of evidence, some loaded with bias and assumptions, and get to the kernel of truth. Dear coroner, don’t see with your eyes, but through them.