 What is the significance of Jimmy Savile to the article?
Face value When the BBC broadcast the recent documentary by Louis Theroux that looked back at the time he spent in the company of Jimmy Savile, there was disbelief across social media that no one had stepped in to stop Savile from committing his crimes. Some blamed the BBC, some blamed those in Savile's immediate circle, but others blamed a simple error of human judgment. "He literally couldn't look more like a paedophile," read one post – one of many to state a supposedly incontrovertible truth: that Savile's criminal tendencies could have been detected from the shape of his features, his eyes, his hair. We know that paedophiles, murderers and other violent criminals come in many shapes and sizes. If we knew nothing about their criminal history, some of their photos might even appear attractive. A recent paper, published by Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang of Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, claims to be the first to use machine learning and neural networks to attempt a fully automated inference of criminality from facial images, removing prejudice from the equation and testing the validity of our gut feelings. Through a study of 1,856 images ("controlled for race, gender, age and facial expression") they claim to have established the validity of "automated, face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding this line of enquiry." In other words, they believe that they've found a relationship between looking like a criminal and actually being one. Theories of physiognomy, however, would persist beyond the Renaissance. In 1586, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta published a book, De humana physiognomonia libri IIII, which established him as the 'father of Physiognomy'. Della Porta's thinking was based on the 'doctrine of signatures'; the idea that the appearance of plants and animals offers clues to their nature. The theories in della Porta's book were supported by dozens of detailed illustrations which, by comparing human faces to those of animals, suggested that they must surely share similar character traits. Lavater's work was criticised for being ridden with bias (black faces rarely emerged well from his analyses) but he was right in one respect: "Whether they are or are not sensible of it," he wrote, "all men are daily influenced by physiognomy."
 To introduce the idea that people think they can tell certain things from looking at someone
 To introduce the idea of the importance of questioning friends of people under investigation  To introduce discussion of documentaries' influence on public perception of criminals  To introduce discussion of murderers and other criminals  To introduce the idea that people think they can tell certain things from looking at someone