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

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

#541

Post by NiloCK »

gwd wrote: post #243
tivert wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a k…

There's another factor in this, which makes it hard to change: For the people in child welfare organizations, for social workers, for doctors, for police, for judges to change their mind about current and future decisions requires them to change their mind about past decisions. The necessary implication is that many of the people they have persecuted in the past were, in fact, innocent. It requires them to admit that…

It's hard to understand something if your salary depends on it being false.

It's much, much harder again to understand something if it makes your life's work ignoble.

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

#542

Post by RoyalHenOil »

oooyay wrote: post #419
gwd wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another factor in this, which makes it hard to change: For the people in child welfare organizations, for social workers, for doctors, for police, for judges to change their mind about current and future decisions requires them to change their mind about past decisions. The necessary implication is that many of the people they have persecuted in the past were, in fact, innocent. It requires them to admit that…

There's also the normalization of seeing and hearing awful things. After a while of being exposed to the wretches of humanity you begin to see the signals for the wretches everywhere. As the warrior poet Maslow put it, "if the only tool you ever have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

I actually strongly suspect that this is a major issue with cops. Even the most well-meaning new hire is likely to become jaded and paranoid after years of interacting primarily with criminals. They are probably more likely to assume the worst of a given stranger, even in contexts where there is no reason to suspect that stranger.

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

#543

Post by cool_dude85 »

DrThunder wrote: post #514
cool_dude85 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you think in a case where the doctor suspects abuse, they should have to ask the kid while the potential abuser stands there next to her?

Underage kids can't consult to really anything legally on their own. You cannot have a system where in certain cases they're treated as adults. I get what you're saying but I cannot believe that any good parent thinks this is ok. This country has weird culture that's started happening in the last decade where the parents take a back seat and the government/institutions are taking their place. Suddenly, you're hearing…

>Parents should never have to give up their rights in the name of "safety".

You can be forgiven with this opinion if you have not met or spent time around the types of parents whose children genuinely need to be taken away: neglectful, abusive, and extremely harmful to their kids.

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

#544

Post by fnordpiglet »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #385
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that about sids. What a bullshit diagnosis. Our children mostly slept tummy down on mum's chest, skin-to-skin, because that reduced sids chance (and we were terrified). But like yours, they couldn't sleep tummy up

AIUI tummy down on a (wakeful) person is generally not a concern nor what the "back is best" crowd is referring to Obviously a parent who is spending nearly all their time with a newborn knows them best and is likely able to make the best judgement about what works for the child, but the purpose of the advice is to avoid a class of scenario that occur most often. due to issues that are very difficult to detect and of…

Even in reading that despite the hyperbolic phrasing I find it unconvincing. We are talking about something that happens to less than 0.04% of babies. The odds ratio quoted is 2 - so for belly sleeping it’s 0.08%. They give hyperbolic advice (it’s critical they sleep supine every time they sleep, etc), and while I don’t dismiss an observed odds ratio in a single study of 2, I also hold that it’s not critical in the least. What’s critical is sleep, milk, love, and intimate closeness. The energy spent on back sleeping would be better applied to emphasizing the need for intimacy as failure to thrive is much more likely than sids.

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

#545

Post by rapatel0 »

eru wrote: post #259
rapatel0 wrote: post #181

This doesn’t surprise me. We have massive systemic issues in medical science and care delivery. - Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist. - news media on medical science glosses over all uncertainties in the name of clickbaity sensationalism. -…

> - Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist. Well, this wouldn't even be that bad, if sample size were actually large enough.

That's part of it. The sample size is usually super small.

Furthermore, there's the opportunity. With large amounts of data (from software, medical devices, sensors) we can actually tackle this problem at scale.

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

#546

Post by RoyalHenOil »

jvanderbot wrote: post #472
tivert wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a k…

This is true, but not for the reasons you might expect. Well, 10% of the time this is the case, but 90% ... Mostly they are operating on priors. The prior probability of a separation being the right thing to do is very high, because they have a _long list of mitigation before they actually can take a kid away. In the case of a doctor-approved immediate physical danger, they are regulated into acting on behalf of the…

Priors should never, ever factor into it like this.

I was a foster child who was taken from my parents wrongly. A third party (not connected to child services) made a false accusation to the cops, who took me and turned me over to child services without any investigation. Even though I insisted nothing had happened and even though child services failed to produce any evidence (beyond aforesaid hearsay) over the course of their investigation, child services nonetheless fought extremely hard against letting me go home to my family.

In the end, a judge had to order them to return me to my family because they refused to accept that the accusation had been a lie.

In the meantime, I went through three different foster homes. I was a very difficult kid to foster (I cried and screamed a lot, demanding to go home) and so I unfortunately experienced abuse and neglect in two of the three homes. (My first foster home was particularly severe, which was strange because they were otherwise great parents to their biological kids. At least the other abusive home treated their real children equally poorly.)

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

#547

Post by astura »

hackernewds wrote: post #112
irjustin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk. Stay away from mommy blogs/forums. Those are the most toxic cesspools I've ever witnessed. Things are changing, some of the newer ones are not nearly as bad, but man the judgement is super real. Nurses are one thing, but personally, the worst is family members who think they know better and don't understan…

What are some good mom blogs?

Not a "mom blog," but covers pregnancy and childbirth from a scientific viewpoint plus some parenting topics - The Skeptical OB - https://www.skepticalob.com/ the author was a practicing obstetrician, professor at Harvard Medical School, and mom of 4.

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

#548

Post by conductr »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #518
conductr wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m rather neurotypical but I worked in high trauma environments during my college years; ER, OR, ICU, various life and death situations on daily basis in a healthcare environment. I pretty much saw it all. That was 20+ years ago, my career was not there so I left clinical work but the ability to function during high stress and deal with the present mentally stuck with me. I also could mostly leave it at the door and…

When I was young my youngest brother walked across a large firepit barefoot (no one realized it was still hot, the neighbor had been burning wood and the like outside). He experienced 3rd degree burns on his feet and my mother rushed him to the hospital. My stepfather at the time was basically freaking out, my mother was very calm. After it was over the thing she told us is that panicking in an emergency helps no one…

> I had to put a pet down once and I was crying like a baby so maybe not

I relate with much of your comment but this was something I actually considered writing before. The most drastic emotional response I've ever experienced was putting a pet down. I knew it was the right choice, planned it out, to be done at home in the back yard, his favorite place and final resting place, and even made time for one last outing to his favorite lake a little while before.

But with all the planning and forethought, it's like I started grieving before the event happened. So when it did happen, I just cried and cried. Like, sobbing on the floor for an hour type thing. Also, the fact he was mentally still 100% but his body was failing made it a wrenching decision that I was questioning even though I felt like it was the humane choice.

I was really in a funk for about a year after. The first couple months, I'd just randomly cry as some old memory would pop in my head. I was really close to this dog though, was like a child to me and it hit really hard. I got him in my early 20s, then later married but hadn't had kids yet. For some reason, the saddest thought in my head was "he'll never get to meet my kids". I've had 2 dogs since, that have been more like pets than children and I have real children too which changes the dynamic entirely.

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

#549

Post by RoyalHenOil »

pivot654 wrote: post #337
tivert wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a k…

I work in child welfare in Australia. Not sure how it compares to the models in other countries, but we desperately try not to remove child from their families. There is very little evidence to support it improves outcomes for those children, and the removing itself is highly horrific for everyone involved. Even in the instances we remove children, we actively attempt to work with the parents to address the issue. We…

What happens if the cops are called, rather than child services?

This is how I ended up in foster care over a false accusation against my parents (in the US). I'm told that if the accuser had called child services directly, they would have done their investigation first and only taken me if they determined I was in danger (which I was not).

But because the accuser called the cops instead, the cops took me without investigating first and handed me over to child services. Thus I spent the entire investigation period in foster care, until a judge ordered me to be sent back to my family. Even though they failed to produce any evidence of abuse, it still took many months.

It was an extremely traumatizing and harrowing experience (honestly even harder on me and my parents than when my brother got sick and died) and remains the worst thing I have ever experienced. But I find it hard to even talk about because people tend to assume that if a child is seized from a home, the parents must have been abusive. (My parents are extremely not abusive, not even in the mildest sense of the word.)

What's fucked is that I actually know two other families who went through this exact same experience: false accuser calls the cops, the cops give the kid to child services, child services puts the kid in foster care while investigating, the investigation turns up no evidence of abuse, the court forces child services to send the kid home, and the kid finally returns home with lifelong trauma.

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

#550

Post by akoboldfrying »

tikhonj wrote: post #208
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…

Politicians benefit from locking people up because it gives them an easily measurable way to look "tough on crime".

Good point.
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