A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy • Hacker News Board

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#441

Post by zamadatix » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #108

zamadatix wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling me no defense lawyer thinks about arguing the evidence is unreliable or are you just saying the prosecution throws everything they can find at their side of the case? The former seems extremely hard to believe (lest you're about to become the greatest defense lawmaker of all time due to wisdom shared in a short HN comment) and the latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as desig…

> latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as designed Prosecutors in America have one goal: close the case. At any cost, close the case. They are not interested in justice. They are not interested in finding the one who actually committed the crime. They are interested in closing the case. If that is “working as designed”, then we need to change the design.

And the opposite is true of the defense. The result is a 3rd party gets to hear all of the evidence either side could come up with and weight the outcome based on all of that instead of 2 interested parties trying to figure it out themselves.

There are of course ways to improve the legal system, more equal access to quality representation is my preferred improvement regardless of system, but you can't just look at one element of the system in isolation and declare the whole concept bad. That's "The CPU produces waste heat so we need to remove it completely" type logic where you find one thing that sounds unambiguously bad and ignore that it could be a symptom of great net positive function of that thing. Doesn't mean it's perfect either, just means it needs more than a shallow dismissal.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#442

Post by tboyd47 » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

guynamedloren wrote: post #274

Content aside (which is both thought provoking and incredibly alarming) I’m fascinated by the author’s commitment to deeply understanding a system and the factors at play within that system. There’s something inspiring about relentless truth seeking, to the point of obsession, with some extraordinary level of meticulousness. Particularly when it challenges conventional wisdom. This is a slippery slope as it can quick…

When you are a parent it comes naturally. Because your child becomes your #1 time and energy investment, all other investments of time and energy seem trivial. Many parents of autistic children have made similar intellectual commitments. I'd go so far to say that it's commonplace in that community. All the more reason children should not be separated from their parents for flimsy scientific assertions by experts.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#443

Post by JTbane » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #268

akoboldfrying wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>designed to let the state rob a few more individuals of their freedom "The state" doesn't benefit in any way from locking people up. In fact, it costs them money (both directly and in lost taxes from the lost salaries and wages of those incarcerated). An argument could be made that prosecutors benefit from higher incarceration rates through the incentives you described. And an argument could definitely be made that…

I hate to break it to you, but the prison system has been the premiere, essential job-creation program for these United States ever since Appomattox 1865. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit... We got 800,000 or so right now. Fight unemployment? Lock more people up.

Yep and there are some specific product that rely heavily on prison labor- license plates come to mind.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#444

Post by rossant » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:16 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #429

lqet wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that 10% of incarcerated individuals are innocent (which I do not find an unrealistic number), or are you saying that 10% of incarcerated individuals are wrongly in prison for crimes against their children?

10% of people are innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted . Whole innocence is another thing. But yes, there are a huge number of people wrongfully convicted. Things like DNA evidence is showing us that a great many mistakes are made. For those crimes convicted without things like DNA evidence, one must presume an equal rate of wrongful convictions. Courts are not FAA crash investigations, or any ot…

Yes. I suggest everyone to look into the fantastic work done by the Innocence Project [1] and the Innocence Network [2].

Also, the Innocence Files is a must-watch on Netflix [3].

[1] https://innocenceproject.org/

[2] https://innocencenetwork.org/

[3] https://www.netflix.com/title/80214563

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#445

Post by semanticist » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #365

Muromec wrote: post #215

Oh the good old, violent Easter European bias mixed into crap science.

> Oh the good old, violent Easter European bias mixed into crap science. Honest question, trying to parse your statement (and bear in mind I don't live in Europe, so I'm surely missing the obvious): do you mean that in Denmark there is a bias against Eastern Europeans, such as Romanians? Edit: excellent, got a downvote for asking an honest question and clarifying why I wrote it. Is this an example of the fine discour…

For your edit: 'honest questions' (which are in fact anything but: the person asking has no interest in the answer, and the question itself is often leading) are a common disruptive tactic used by people (normally pushing extreme right-wing ideologies) to derail a conversation.

I'm sure that you're not doing that here, but unfortunately people with genuinely honest questions have become collateral damage caused by disingenuous actors, especially among people with itchy downvote-trigger-fingers.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#446

Post by rossant » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #418

dcow wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t even true for the US. In the US we believe it’s better to let a criminal run free than deprive an innocent of their liberty.

"It is better to let 100 criminals go free than to imprison 1 innocent man." — Benjamin Franklin

I've seen police officers say the exact opposite: "It's better to imprison 100 innocent people than risking letting 1 criminal go free and harm children".

Sigh.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#447

Post by rossant » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

singleshot_ wrote: post #408

rossant wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish, unfortunately I'm not a criminal defense lawyer nor a medical doctor! And I don't intend to be one anytime soon. ;) I think the most productive thing I can at least try to do is to raise awareness among lawyers, doctors, and all professionals involved. No one has the time to dig into it as much as I did, but perhaps I can organize and present our current knowledge as clearly as possible. The book is one littl…

First: I'm very sad about your son and also about your experiences afterward. If you have the requisite "knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education" you can testify as an expert. No need to be a lawyer, don't need to be a doctor. You gave yourself that knowledge and your knowledge exceeds that of the typical "they shook the baby" expert. I'd go with you any day.

I had no idea that was possible. Thank you.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#448

Post by Dove » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #353

> What happened is that during my literature review, I disturbingly realized that what I had been told at the hospital ... was an assertion based on very weak scientific foundations. And yet ... has been taught as though it was a proven fact to generations of physicians all over the world. This exact thing has happened to me so many times, on so many different medical topics, that it is now my going in assumption tha…

One particularly aggravating manifestation of the medical industry's inability to be wrong is its tendency to blame patients. It is famous for doing so in the area of obesity. But one rather entertaining incident happened to me: I was in the hospital under observation and (for medical reasons) fasting. They had me on IV saline which, apart from the medication I was getting, was all I took in. After a day or so, I was informed I had developed a potassium deficiency, and given a supplement with the air of someone who needed to fix a bad diet.

My potassium had been just fine when I came into the hospital. At this point, I stood up and read the content of the saline bag, considered how many times I'd seen it changed, did a little noodling about sodium potassium balance, and dramatically downgraded my opinion of the experts in charge of my care.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#449

Post by TeeMassive » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #312

TeeMassive wrote: post #136

"What happened is that during my literature review, I disturbingly realized that what I had been told at the hospital, namely that subdural and retinal hemorrhage in infants are almost always caused by violent shaking even in the absence of external evidence of trauma, was an assertion based on very weak scientific foundations. And yet, this “shaking hypothesis” (sometimes referred to as the theory of the “triad”, si…

> This is why using experts for advice is great but everyone should still be encouraged to do their own research. Not everyone is equipped to do this kind of literature review (that’s not research), or have access to all these papers. Everyone needs to be critical and skeptical to a reasonable extent, but this kind of “do your own research” attitude is damaging. People just end up trusting dodgy but authoritative-sou…

YouTube videos are just letting other people do research ;)

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#450

Post by rossant » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #438

I do wonder how many cases of 'shaken babies' are because the baby has stopped responding for some other reason, and a desperate mother tries to revive them by shaking? I'm pretty sure I have seen such things in nature documentaries, where a mother shakes a stillborn/dead child as a last ditch attempt to bring them back to life. If that really was what happened, I would struggle to convict the mother for murder if I…

That's a very interesting and relevant comment. Maybe that happens in a few cases. However, the reality in my experience is much more complex (and interesting). This is basically an instance of a coerced internalized false confession, according to the classification by Saul Kassin [1].

Let's imagine a mother seeing her baby who suddenly stops breathing. Panicked, she gently takes her baby under the armpits: "Please wake up!". The baby is brought to the hospital, doctors find subdural and retinal hemorrhage, she is accused of shaking her baby.

At the police station, investigators are told by doctors that SBS is 100% certain, that the baby was shaken just before collapsing. They keep pressuring the mother, who swears there was no shaking, no trauma, no accident, no short fall, absolutely nothing. The baby just collapsed with no triggering event. This is a story that is repeated again and again by most parents and caregivers who are living this situation.

This is such a dramatic and emotional situation for parents and caregivers that many will actually doubt their own memory (that actually happened to me, briefly, and yet I never went through a tough police interrogation in custody). Anyway, innocent and sincere persons will actually try to find rational explanations. They will retrospectively try to find any sort of mild movement of the baby's head that could resemble shaking. Police officers will say what they're told (which is actually true): mild shaking will not cause this, only extremely violent ones will.

At one point during the interrogation, the idea will be brought up that, perhaps, the mother accidentally shook the baby after the collapse as a resuscitation attempt. In the end, it may well be the only rational explanation? The mother may even end up believing that she involuntarily harmed her own child while trying to save him, and that will be the charge brought by the prosecution that leads the mother to trial.

In reality, this gesture was likely to be far too mild to do any serious injury to the child. However, in this particular context, it may well be the only explanation that could be accepted by both the investigators and the defendant. In these cases, it's more likely that the child collapsed due to some undetected medical condition leading to a respiratory arrest (akin to what happens in SIDS).

I've seen this pattern over and over again. It has actually be well studied by psychologists in slightly more general contexts. The book contains 2 chapters (by Keith Findley, Richard Leo, Deborah Davis) on the extremely important issue of SBS confessions, as this is basically the main evidence of the diagnosis today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_confession#Coerced_inter...