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Shaking and child abuse are obviously real things. However, the way to diagnose shaken baby syndrome has been the subject of an ongoing scientific controversy f

Shaking and child abuse are obviously real things. However, the way to diagnose shaken baby syndrome has been the subject of an ongoing scientific controversy for decades. With several colleagues, we have just published a textbook about this sensitive issue [1]. I've also written about how I, as a neuroscience researcher and software engineer, came into this diagnosis [2]. Finally, an introduction to this fascinating scientific topic can be found here, with many references for those interested [3]. [1] https://shakenbaby.science https://shakenbaby.science [2] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-baby-syndrome-abusive-head-trauma-controversy/ https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha... [3] https://cyrille.rossant.net/introduction-shaken-baby-syndrome-controversy/ https://cyrille.rossant.net/introduction-shaken-baby-syndrom...

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
Hey, can you please post your cambridgeblog.com article on HN? As you say in your article, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of people in jail for having shaken their babies to death. I can't imagine any harm more horrible that our society can perpetrate than punishing someone for the death of their loved ones when they had nothing to do with it. To think that this is done systematically is inconsolable, insufferable to contemplate.
- rossant 3y ago
  Sure, done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 I totally agree. This is insufferable. This is not just a virtual, academic subject to me. I've cofounded an association of French families [1] that has been contacted by 1300+ people in the past 8 years or so. I see parents losing their baby to foster care for 6, 12, 24 months or more. To say they are broken for life is an understatement. I see fathers, mothers, nannies maintain their innocence for years until they are convicted to 5 to 15 years of jail, because medical experts have certified that no other explanation than shaking could have ever caused the child's findings. Three more people I know have been convicted in the past couple of weeks. I feel so absolutely desperate and hopeless seeing people going to jail one after the other, week after week, while I can't do anything about it. All cases are not illegitimate, of course, but there are serious reasons to be doubtful when there is no external evidence of trauma, strong and sustained denials, and no antecedent of abuse. For sure, we have tried to alert medical authorities, doctors, politicians, institutions, judges, celebrities, scientists, journalists for years, and almost no one actually cares, while those who do will do everything in their power to cancel and suppress us (Waney Squier is one among many other examples, Chapter 1 of our Cambridge book provides more examples). I see no other example in our modern history of an active, systematic endeavor that has been so destructive to so many people for so long. [1] https://adikia.fr/ https://adikia.fr/
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    >> Sure, done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 Thanks! Although I just saw it and didn't have the chance to upvote it when it was posted. Let's hope it gets on the second chance queue. It's a good article, well written and level-headed. >> This is not just a virtual, academic subject to me. I can tell. Thank you for your indefatigable advocacy. I read about Shaken Baby Syndrome some time ago and since then I've kept bookmarks of cases I see in the news that seem to be false convictions. I remember one in particular of a British man who was accused of having murdered his baby daughter by shaking. The case has stuck in my mind because the press reported how a Playstation was found on the living room table and the prosecution alleged that the daughter's crying had disturbed the father's playing, and so he had shaken her so he could continue playing. I could not believe that such a far-fetched conjecture, virtually impossible to falsify, would be accepted by judges and juries and thought that for the prosecution to be grasping for straws like that they must really have nothing concrete to go on, but the father was put in jail nonetheless. I don't have my bookmarks at hand now so I can't look up his name. I suspect that when legal and medical experts claim that SBS cases don't only take the evidence of the triad into account, that's the kind of "evidence" that they mean they also consider: just-so stories that stop only short of calling the family pet as a witness. Edit: I just realised - your association is called "adikia". "Injustice" in my native language, Greek.
  - sacnoradhq 3y ago
    That sounds like a Kafkaesque, dystopian situation of readily tearing families apart, lack of due process, and guilt until proven innocence. I would recommend contacting ProPublica and TheGuardian to raise awareness. Edit: My cousin is similar to a nurse at an adolescent lockdown facility in N. Texas for serious mental healthcare and physical safety needs that no parent could reasonably hope to provide. The standard is so high and the beds so few, the kids in the facility are the most desperate cases and pretrial diversions that would otherwise go unaddressed in carceral situations. It takes a special, brave, and trained caregiver to meet the needs that medication, godly patience and tolerance, and love alone cannot provide.
deleted 3y ago
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sacnoradhq 3y ago
Good references. The total gamut of child abuse doesn't necessarily leave any physical or medical evidence, and much of it isn't technically illegal. It's been my experience that there is widespread hesitancy on the part of educators and medical professionals to report borderline or even clear-cut abuse.
lisper 3y ago
OK, but that still doesn't explain the connection between SBS and hypnosis (and Texas for that matter). Is there a particular history of using hypnosis to convict innocent people of shaking babies to death in Texas and impose the death penalty on them? Is this common knowledge? The original comment to which I was responding still makes absolutely no sense to me. And getting downvoted because I asked for clarification is making even less sense to me. I must be missing something fundamental here. (Either that or HN has jumped the shark, which I fervently hope is not the case.)
- deleted 3y ago
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- stephen_g 3y ago
  There’s no specific link between SBS and hypnosis except for this particular case. The problem is: 1. The science seems to point towards ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ being able to be caused by several different things, including ones that don’t even involve physical trauma, so physical shaking is only one cause amongst many whereas most doctors and the justice system still mostly confidentially assert it’s always from shaking. Saying SBS is always a result of shaking is junk science. 2. Hypnosis is a way to extract confessions, but it’s probably extremely likely to extract false confessions. Hence why it’s generally disallowed, because it’s pseudoscience. 3. The particular case involving (1) assuming SBS is always from shaking and (2) a false confession from hypnosis happened in Texas. So that’s the link.
- rossant 3y ago
  I don't know anything about hypnosis, but I think the comment you replied too made an analogy between the contested science of SBS, and the unreliability of hypnosis induced testimonies. There are many other scientific methods in criminal law that have been criticized for their poor reliability, yet many of them are still routinely used in courts. [1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-releases-report-forensic-science-criminal-courts https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-r... [2] https://innocenceproject.org/misapplication-of-forensic-science/ https://innocenceproject.org/misapplication-of-forensic-scie... [3] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-problem-with-forensic-sciences https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-problem-wi...

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

Hey, can you please post your cambridgeblog.com article on HN? As you say in your article, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of people in jail for having shaken their babies to death. I can't imagine any harm more horrible that our society can perpetrate than punishing someone for the death of their loved ones when they had nothing to do with it. To think that this is done systematically is inconsolable, insufferable to contemplate.

rossant 3y ago
Sure, done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 I totally agree. This is insufferable. This is not just a virtual, academic subject to me. I've cofounded an association of French families [1] that has been contacted by 1300+ people in the past 8 years or so. I see parents losing their baby to foster care for 6, 12, 24 months or more. To say they are broken for life is an understatement. I see fathers, mothers, nannies maintain their innocence for years until they are convicted to 5 to 15 years of jail, because medical experts have certified that no other explanation than shaking could have ever caused the child's findings. Three more people I know have been convicted in the past couple of weeks. I feel so absolutely desperate and hopeless seeing people going to jail one after the other, week after week, while I can't do anything about it. All cases are not illegitimate, of course, but there are serious reasons to be doubtful when there is no external evidence of trauma, strong and sustained denials, and no antecedent of abuse. For sure, we have tried to alert medical authorities, doctors, politicians, institutions, judges, celebrities, scientists, journalists for years, and almost no one actually cares, while those who do will do everything in their power to cancel and suppress us (Waney Squier is one among many other examples, Chapter 1 of our Cambridge book provides more examples). I see no other example in our modern history of an active, systematic endeavor that has been so destructive to so many people for so long. [1] https://adikia.fr/ https://adikia.fr/
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  >> Sure, done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 Thanks! Although I just saw it and didn't have the chance to upvote it when it was posted. Let's hope it gets on the second chance queue. It's a good article, well written and level-headed. >> This is not just a virtual, academic subject to me. I can tell. Thank you for your indefatigable advocacy. I read about Shaken Baby Syndrome some time ago and since then I've kept bookmarks of cases I see in the news that seem to be false convictions. I remember one in particular of a British man who was accused of having murdered his baby daughter by shaking. The case has stuck in my mind because the press reported how a Playstation was found on the living room table and the prosecution alleged that the daughter's crying had disturbed the father's playing, and so he had shaken her so he could continue playing. I could not believe that such a far-fetched conjecture, virtually impossible to falsify, would be accepted by judges and juries and thought that for the prosecution to be grasping for straws like that they must really have nothing concrete to go on, but the father was put in jail nonetheless. I don't have my bookmarks at hand now so I can't look up his name. I suspect that when legal and medical experts claim that SBS cases don't only take the evidence of the triad into account, that's the kind of "evidence" that they mean they also consider: just-so stories that stop only short of calling the family pet as a witness. Edit: I just realised - your association is called "adikia". "Injustice" in my native language, Greek.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
  That sounds like a Kafkaesque, dystopian situation of readily tearing families apart, lack of due process, and guilt until proven innocence. I would recommend contacting ProPublica and TheGuardian to raise awareness. Edit: My cousin is similar to a nurse at an adolescent lockdown facility in N. Texas for serious mental healthcare and physical safety needs that no parent could reasonably hope to provide. The standard is so high and the beds so few, the kids in the facility are the most desperate cases and pretrial diversions that would otherwise go unaddressed in carceral situations. It takes a special, brave, and trained caregiver to meet the needs that medication, godly patience and tolerance, and love alone cannot provide.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Good references. The total gamut of child abuse doesn't necessarily leave any physical or medical evidence, and much of it isn't technically illegal. It's been my experience that there is widespread hesitancy on the part of educators and medical professionals to report borderline or even clear-cut abuse.

lisper 3y ago

OK, but that still doesn't explain the connection between SBS and hypnosis (and Texas for that matter). Is there a particular history of using hypnosis to convict innocent people of shaking babies to death in Texas and impose the death penalty on them? Is this common knowledge? The original comment to which I was responding still makes absolutely no sense to me. And getting downvoted because I asked for clarification is making even less sense to me. I must be missing something fundamental here. (Either that or HN has jumped the shark, which I fervently hope is not the case.)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stephen_g 3y ago
There’s no specific link between SBS and hypnosis except for this particular case. The problem is: 1. The science seems to point towards ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ being able to be caused by several different things, including ones that don’t even involve physical trauma, so physical shaking is only one cause amongst many whereas most doctors and the justice system still mostly confidentially assert it’s always from shaking. Saying SBS is always a result of shaking is junk science. 2. Hypnosis is a way to extract confessions, but it’s probably extremely likely to extract false confessions. Hence why it’s generally disallowed, because it’s pseudoscience. 3. The particular case involving (1) assuming SBS is always from shaking and (2) a false confession from hypnosis happened in Texas. So that’s the link.
rossant 3y ago
I don't know anything about hypnosis, but I think the comment you replied too made an analogy between the contested science of SBS, and the unreliability of hypnosis induced testimonies. There are many other scientific methods in criminal law that have been criticized for their poor reliability, yet many of them are still routinely used in courts. [1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-releases-report-forensic-science-criminal-courts https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-r... [2] https://innocenceproject.org/misapplication-of-forensic-science/ https://innocenceproject.org/misapplication-of-forensic-scie... [3] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-problem-with-forensic-sciences https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-problem-wi...