What the world needs now is Science, not Dogma competition

An appeal for justice

The debate over SBS/AHT has reached new heights of cognitive rigidity and entrenchment. In this climate of fog and hostility to objectivity, it is difficult to incorporate new information and alter perspectives, and newcomers to the subject like me with a fresh and objective viewpoint that differs from the central dogma of <redacted>.org are excommunicated from it by Holy Office mandarins justifying their orange judgment of capital punishment by secret, confidential, anonymous eminence grises witch-hunter accusations of spamming as a cover story for their real motives, which remain covert and subjective and are no doubt religious and/or egotistical, or they just don't like me because i am black.

The reaction to negative feedback – that is, challenges to the blanket denial of even a soupcon of the SBS/AHT hypothesis – has been doubling down and increased overconfidence on the part of its fishnet derniers. What the international medical, scientific, and legal community needs now when it comes to the SBS/AHT debate is a back to square one good hard look at facts instead of opinions (especially the contrived opinions of duplicitous lawyers who are only in it for themselves), an intentional effort to create what this author (ie me) has described as a ‘kindergarten-level explanation of words of one syllable' that juries and lawyers and pediatricians and yellow press journalists can grasp - and even, God willing, at a stretch, Supreme Court judges - a high validity Common Ground environment with pediatricians and child abuse specialists where there is the (albeit slim) chance of reaching stable relationships and prolonged study of objectively identifiable cues and subsequent events and outcomes]. That book [2] is said to engage that process, but the evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that the members and officials of <redacted>.org do not. 

 - adapted from Barry Scheck, After a Quarter of a Century, Have Any Lessons Been Learned from the Trial of Louise Woodward?, in [1]

Aye, there's the rub  [2]

[1] Findley, K et al (eds) Shaken Baby Syndrome. Investigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009177894.001

[2] Zanini (1965) Moi, je veux de partir en vacances

i demonstrably lack the political skill to win friends and influence people, but i won't give up on Ohio v Partin and will struggle to get her justice until my dying day, which is just around the corner, so i haven't got time to waste on any more humourless bigheaded twonks.

If, as a result of the surgeon's scraping, some calcified hematoma slid down the faix, that might make it look like whatever was there before has enlarged, but so far as i can see at the moment (which admittedly isn't very far) that doesn't prove that blood and bone cannot be differentiated on a CT scan, and it could be that the second image was of a different slice than the first, which would explain the apparent enlargement, so hopefully it can be argued that it can't be argued that a hematoma cannot be semiquantitatively aged from CT image alone, especially when you are denied access to surgeon report information that might contradict the prosecution argument that the hematoma was less than an hour old, and that the child, in the space of a minute, ran to the kitchen, chucked ketchup down the toilet, and was floored and killed by an uppercut "Leopard Punch" because she was whining for her Dad and still half asleep, all in the space of a minute, which is a bloody ridiculous fabricated story put out in unconnected pieces by the yellow press mouthpiece for a sheriff doing what he's told by a ruthless witch-hunter.  sorry for my spelling.

i beseech thee, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. 

I believe the truth is actually easy to find, and easy to say.  It is this:

1.  baby shaking can cause severe, even fatal, injury

2.  therefore, an injured baby with no other symptoms of disease or history of accident may have been shaken

3.  therefore, Possible Abusive Head Trauma can be diagnosed

4.  But unqualified Abusive Head Trauma cannot, ever!  It is not a medical diagnosis, it's an accusation of criminality.

5.  Therefore the name AHT should be changed to HT, because you don't need an MD to know that action and reaction are equal and opposite so A hitting B has the same effect as B hitting A (except, it has been officially argued, when it comes to imaginary aluminium aeroplanes and real steel columns, but that's another story).

 

Empirical studies^1-4 have confirmed the widely believed notion that history taking is an important aspect of the diagnostic process, including in the diagnosis of infants where the history is provided by the caregiver.⁵

Yes, it is important, not for the reason given, but because it lies at the heart of the AHT controversy, because it implicitly implies the irrational presumption that Abuse can be diagnosed.

it may be widely believed among readers of the American Society of Child Abuse Protection or whatever it's called, but it is not widely believed by anyone who has ever studied cause and effect in physics, or in cognitive psychology.

caregiver history is indeed very important for medical diagnosis of possible cause of inferred probable injury, so that the injury can be probably identified, so that probably effective therapy can be identified  - but caregiver history - and medical symptoms too, for that matter -  are wholly unreliable as a source of proof of abuse.

Because abuse cannot - should not - be diagnosed by a doctor untrained in criminal investigation.  It is an inference of criminality, which depends on so many other things, notably forensic evidence and deductive reasoning.

sh, rh, and brain swelling are NOT the fingerprints of abuse.  they are only the fingerprints or probable trauma, but NOT of what probably caused that trauma.

It's Elementary, my dear Watson.  Reasoning is the gold standard for deciding abuse beyond reasonable doubt - the clue is in the name.  Simple, accurate, helpful to all concerned, except money-grubbers.

As a shaken baby myself, battered for my naive crying, by obdurate aggressive nameless cowards hiding under your skirts, i can testify what it feels like to be on the receiving end of abuse from loco in parentis authority and attack-dogs.

Therefore i beseech thee, in the bowels of Richard Dawkins, someone should focus on campaigning to change the rules that pediatricians go by, and those rules - in USA at least - are more or less set by https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/135/5/e20150356/33747/The-Evaluation-of-Suspected-Child-Physical-Abuse?autologincheck=redirected.  It only took me 5 minutes to see how distorted its blurb about Head Trauma is.

Of course, there would be a downside: if the truth about shaking babies ever came out, there would be no more unjustified sbs court cases, and no more business for unscrupulous defense lawyers, so they will want to suppress it.

So once again, and not for the first time, i am banging my head against a brick wall.

""What's for breakfast?" asked Pooh" - AA Milne