Comment by rossant
2 years ago
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
[2] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha...
[3] https://cyrille.rossant.net/introduction-shaken-baby-syndrom...
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.
Sure, done: https://adikia.fr/
>> Sure, done: 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.
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.
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.)
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-r...
[2] https://innocenceproject.org/misapplication-of-forensic-scie...
[3] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-problem-wi...
Sure, I don't disagree with any of that. But contrary to the claim made in TFA, SBS is not junk science, at least not if you consider the Mayo Clinic to be a reliable source. It's a real thing. What constitutes sufficient evidence to convict someone of it is a different question. You can't just dismiss a claim of SBS a priori as "junk science".
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You were downvoted because your comment showed you didn't read the OP article, which answers your question thoroughly
But it doesn't. It makes the unsubstantiated claim that shaken baby syndrome is junk science. It isn't. It's a real thing, at least according to the Mayo Clinic, which I consider more trustworthy on this topic than The Guardian.
It may well be that the evidence for SBS in this particular case was bogus, but it does not follow that SBS is bogus in general.
AFAICT The Junk Science at play here is not that SBS doesn't exist, but that the triad of symptoms is enough to definitively prove SBS.
The reference to Texas is because the subject of the article is a particular case in Texas (with references to other laws/cases in Texas like the "junk science writ" and Kosoul Chanthakoummane whose case had nothing to do with SBS). The reference to hypnosis is sort of orthogonal to SBS, it's used as another example of junk science in the article.
This section of the article is probably the most relevant:
Paradoxically, Texas is a leader in countering junk science. In 2013, the state introduced a first-in-the-nation “junk science writ” that allowed prisoners – especially those on death row – to challenge sentences on grounds of misused forensic science. It was under this law that in 2016 Sween saved Roberson from imminent death by securing a stay of execution four days before his scheduled lethal injection.
But the hope generated by the new junk science law in Texas has proven a chimera. There have been about 70 attempts by death row inmates to utilize the law and of those the number that have obtained relief is zero.
Kosoul Chanthakoummane was one of those who appealed through the junk science law. He had been put on death row on the back of three different types of junk science: hypnosis of a witness to obtain identification, bitemark analysis and a discredited form of DNA testimony.
In August 2022, Texas executed him anyway.
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.
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.