[HN Gopher] A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head...
___________________________________________________________________
A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma
controversy
Author : rossant
Score : 853 points
Date : 2023-09-25 20:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cambridgeblog.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridgeblog.org)
| e40 wrote:
| No mention of the Texas death row inmate's fate to be decided by
| SCOTUS in mere days.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/texas-death-ro...
| Racing0461 wrote:
| [flagged]
| TeeMassive wrote:
| "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", since
| encephalopathy is frequently associated with the other two signs,
| subdural and retinal hemorrhage) has been taught as though it was
| a proven fact to generations of physicians all over the world.
| Every year, thousands of children are removed from their parents,
| and thousands are prosecuted, convicted, and even incarcerated,
| on the basis of this assertion. Law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer
| qualifies SBS/AHT as a "medical diagnosis of murder". The very
| least we should expect for an assertion this powerful is that it
| should be based on reliable scientific foundations."
|
| This is why using experts for advice is great but everyone should
| still be encouraged to do their own research.
| xpe wrote:
| We need so much more than some combination of (1) trusting
| experts and (2) doing your own research.
|
| The first is practically necessary but unsatisfying given well-
| known concerns about scientific replication, knowledge
| dissemination, and industry incentives.
|
| The second isn't practical for most people.
|
| I don't have detailed interventions to suggest right now, but
| it seems clear that we need better _systems_ that result in
| less dogmatic behavior among experts and legal systems.
| scott_w wrote:
| How would doing your own research prevent the state from taking
| your child away and putting you in prison for murder?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > using experts for advice is great
|
| If they are experts. The problem lies in distinguishing those
| who actually do have expertise in the field in question from
| those who merely think that they do and can persuade others
| that they do.
|
| In many medical contexts there is no such thing as an expert
| because the data simply doesn't exist, they are sometimes
| simply more capable than the general public.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Actual experts I talked too can tell you easily _why_ the
| opinion they have are true and the evidence it is based on.
| They are also very good at vulgarization.
| kergonath wrote:
| > 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-
| sounding YouTube videos and blog posts because they cannot read
| scientific articles.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| YouTube videos are just letting other people do research ;)
| babuloseo wrote:
| Wow, makes me wanna get a ph.d.
| [deleted]
| drug-freedom wrote:
| [flagged]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> how many people are in jail or lost their kids due to
| something that didn't actually happen.
|
| Thousands upon thousands. By some estimates upwards of 10% of
| incarcerated individuals. The situation is just accepted. The
| general consensus is always that locking up too many people is
| better than than too few. It is on defense attorneys to check on
| the system.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37667150.
| lqet wrote:
| 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?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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
| other sort of investigation. They are not about truth. They
| are about rights and laws. There is no right to a truthful
| outcome, only a lawful one.
| rossant wrote:
| 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
| lqet wrote:
| I agree, but I think OP referred to crimes involving
| violence against their own children.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Not everywhere is the US.
| dcow wrote:
| 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.
| kmkemp wrote:
| That seems to be the sentiment based on our founding
| origins or if you talk to an individual, but the fact is
| that we imprison more people per capita than anyone else.
| It's hard for me to believe that all of the criminals just
| live in the USA.
| nemo44x wrote:
| About 70% of convicts in prison are there for violent
| offenses and should be there. The remaining 30% is mainly
| drug and property crimes.
|
| Now it's important to understand what is meant when
| people reference incarceration numbers. A lot of these
| are people awaiting trial on charges they will be found
| guilty of but receive minimal sentences via plea
| bargaining. Another large portion are illegal immigrants
| that are awaiting processing for either integration or
| deportation.
|
| So if you erase those 2 groups it's mainly violent
| people. There's an abundance of violent people in the USA
| compared to Western Europe and certainly Asia I'd say.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| "It is better to let 100 criminals go free than to imprison
| 1 innocent man." -- Benjamin Franklin
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A quote I have never heard from anyone running to be a
| DA, judge, sheriff, magistrate, or any other participant
| beyond defense attorneys. Such sayings do not reflect
| reality.
| rossant wrote:
| 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.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > In the US we believe...
|
| Sadly, that varies enormously with the social status and
| wealth of the accused.
| eecc wrote:
| Imagine when it's not just locking up, but spills over to state
| homicide: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/texas-
| death-ro...
| tru1ock wrote:
| This made me think of Handmaid's Tale. Scary to know how easily
| we will trade away liberty to an illusion of safety for the sake
| of the children.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I would say it's for the sake of safety. Children may be the
| topic here, but it applies much more widely to safety in
| general.
| charles_f wrote:
| Once my kid cut his butt cheek falling off his bike (to this day
| I don't know how). I brought him to the hospital for sutures, and
| was asked to live the room while he was questioned. I felt very
| uncomfortable, and almost guilty, while this lasted for all of 5
| minutes.
|
| I _cannot_ imagine losing custody of your child _while he 's in
| an emergency situation_ for a couple months. This must be a
| nightmare.
| stef25 wrote:
| > was asked to live the room while he was questioned
|
| Is that even legal ?
|
| Anyone trying to get between my kids and I is going to have a
| very bad day.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| 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?
| DrThunder wrote:
| 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 schools, doctor's, etc. telling kids they
| should come to them and not trust their parents. It's
| terrifying as a parent. Parents should never have to give
| up their rights in the name of "safety".
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| It might be a bad idea persoannly to become angry in such a
| situation if the local social service is authoritarian.
|
| But as an altruistic move for the greater good it is good.
| logicchains wrote:
| >But as an altruistic move for the greater good it is good.
|
| That's only the case if overall children taken away from
| their parents end up with better outcomes than in societies
| where children aren't taken away from their parents, have
| you seen any data showing this is the case? Children in
| foster care tend to have horrifically bad outcomes,
| statistically speaking.
| bluGill wrote:
| Children in foster care start off in a much worse
| situation than average. Or at least that is the normal
| case, there are exceptions like the article.
|
| Many parents of 'mentally disabled' kids put the kids in
| foster care because the parents need a break from the
| constant care of a kid who isn't normal. Many other kids
| end up in foster care because they have been abused. Both
| of those will make the kids much worse than normal and
| thus much harder to care for.
|
| Kids that are close to normal but end up in foster care
| often end up adopted fairly quick - there are plenty of
| families who want a kid but not their own (I personally
| know several people with genetics they don't want to pass
| on - there are other good reasons to not want someone
| else's kids) - but they will try to select a kid who is
| going to be easy to raise thus kids who will end up
| normal don't spend much time in foster care.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I meant that protesting the bad process, increasing risk
| of having your child taken away, is good for everyone
| else except you and your child. I.e. altruistic.
| charles_f wrote:
| I am thinking it's even mandated from the medical personnel
| rightbyte wrote:
| The scary thing in such situations is that if the doctor asks
| "did your daddy hit you?" the child might randomly say yes.
| fusslo wrote:
| Shane koyczan has a fantastic poem about a cute thing between
| him and his grandmother that turned into an abuse
| investigation. And then he was bullied because of it!
|
| https://genius.com/Shane-koyczan-to-this-day-annotated
| pcblues wrote:
| There is a problem with responsibility. Do you want to never let
| a perp go (i.e. jail innocent people in order to catch every
| guilty person) versus let some baddies slip through the net while
| not imprisoning innocent people. My own life found itself on the
| nexus, where I lost loved ones with a false accusation, but
| wasn't charged for it from (obvious) lack of evidence. Although
| the legal system worked somewhat, it was too late for me and my
| loved ones. The liars got away with it, and mission accomplished
| in removing me from the family.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Do you want to never let a perp go (i.e. jail innocent people
| in order to catch every guilty person) versus let some baddies
| slip through the net while not imprisoning innocent people
|
| Isn't the latter the official standard most places? Innocent
| until proven guilty. It's just not really a dilemma if you ask
| me. If you have authority to do something based on some event,
| then you have to prove that event happened.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Okay, what happened? You can't leave these half stories here,
| lol
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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 was on the the jury...
| rossant wrote:
| 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...
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| whoof. what an ugly trip!
|
| i've interacted with the author, who wrote a very nice spike
| sorting package called `phy` that i used several years back (and
| iirc turned me off using hdf5 as a result), and came away very
| impressed with what was so obviously a sharp mind. very odd to
| recognize the name in a totally other context. Not very pleasant
| to hear about such a rough time either!
| bombcar wrote:
| And if he hadn't, that nanny would probably be in jail.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| i'm unsurprised by his level of meticulous detail. and mostly
| horrified by those sorts of repercussions being possible.
|
| the whole thing just gives one the serious heebie jeebies
| Jecintaworld wrote:
| [flagged]
| p-e-w wrote:
| > It is the perfect combination of crap.
|
| I think that's being way too charitable.
|
| In a world where people are incarcerated on a scale unprecedented
| in all of human history, and where prosecutorial success is
| measured by number of scalps taken, the assumption that this is
| plain malice designed to let the state rob a few more individuals
| of their freedom makes much more sense than it all being just a
| big pile of incompetence and misunderstandings.
| suckitsam wrote:
| "Sufficiently advanced ignorance/apathy is indistinguishable
| from malice"
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37667150.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _In a world where people are incarcerated on a scale
| unprecedented in all of human history,_
|
| This is only true, because prior to these times, people were
| killed instead. Or beaten to within an inch of their lives.
| Local "justice", lynching, mob action, used to be far, far more
| common.
|
| And of course, many people used to be worked to death. Or sold
| into slavery. Or die from horrid conditions in jail. Or forced
| into the foreign legion.
|
| While I agree that something may be wrong in the US, there are
| many regions in the world where the above still happens.
| the_af wrote:
| > _This is only true, because prior to these times, people
| were killed instead. Or beaten to within an inch of their
| lives. Local "justice", lynching, mob action, used to be far,
| far more common._
|
| Hm, sounds like an assertion that ought to be checked by a
| historian, possibly ACoUP's blog? (Yes, the one who writes
| about Rome, he is sometimes featured in HN). He specializes
| in demolishing misconceptions people/Hollywood have about
| history.
|
| For example, many historians have been writing, recently,
| about how medieval society was far less brutish and cruel
| than portrayed in pop culture. There were laws, rights the
| monarch gave their subjects, culture, etc. Lots of what we
| "know" about the middle ages from Hollywood is simply wrong.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Lots of what we "know" about from Hollywood is simply wrong
| :)
| NordSteve wrote:
| If you're interested in how criminal punishment changed from
| medieval times, Medieval Crime Museum is outstanding.
| https://www.germany.travel/en/cities-culture/medieval-
| crime-...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the
| state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much
| more sense.
|
| Of course it makes much more sense that there was a massive
| conspiracy across the medical, legal, prison industry, and
| press to put more people in prison. Rather than some doctors
| and legal professionals assuming SIDs was a simple explanation
| for a not very well understood medical phenomenon probably with
| many causes.
| zackees wrote:
| [dead]
| bondarchuk wrote:
| >Of course it makes much more sense that there was a massive
| conspiracy across the medical, legal, prison industry, and
| press to put more people in prison.
|
| Not like it hasn't happened before. And you're overestimating
| the required massiveness of the conspiracy IMO.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| > the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the
| state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much
| more sense
|
| That's a lot of work, a lot of malice, a lot of hate, from a
| lot of people, for a very meagre result.
|
| If that's how you view your government you must live a really
| painful existence
| p-e-w wrote:
| > for a very meagre result
|
| Power is not a meagre result. For those people who live by
| it, it is the ultimate goal, and they will use any means to
| obtain and expand it, no matter the cost to others.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's just people "doing their jobs" and trying to get ahead.
|
| That's the banality of evil.
| samtho wrote:
| Lest we forget the very systems enabling this behavior of
| banal evil were created and maintained by perhaps the most
| evil of them all.
| [deleted]
| smolder wrote:
| The word "lest" is meant to come after something else. It
| means "for fear that" or "or else" or something similar.
| So it's not clear what you're trying to say. I don't know
| what "very systems" built by "the most evil" you mean
| either. Is it supposed to be obvious what you're
| referring to?
| Clubber wrote:
| It's from a poem in 1897.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recessional_(poem)
| smolder wrote:
| Oh, okay.
| smolder wrote:
| I clicked the link and remain confused. The poem does
| have in common the term "lest we forget", but apparently
| nothing else. It's also used in a grammatically correct
| way in the poem, but not in your post, since it's not
| following anything.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
| WA wrote:
| Source? Incarceration rate seems to be going down in western
| countries: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042
| p-e-w wrote:
| The _scale_ of incarceration is still unprecedented. A
| reduction by 27 percent doesn 't change that. Imprisonment
| was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was
| police, for that matter). Today's incarceration rates would
| have to be reduced by 99+% in order to reach pre-modern
| levels, where large cities often had only a handful of cells
| in total, and rural areas had none at all.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of
| history (as was police, for that matter).
|
| And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals
| not punished
|
| For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an
| argument for or against anything
| bbarnett wrote:
| Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime,
| with king's justice.
|
| Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are
| far, far, far better than mob justice.
|
| Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely
| bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights?
|
| Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is
| worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and
| laughable.
| the_af wrote:
| It's not so clear cut. At least admit that a lot of
| thought has been given to this, none the least by
| Foucalt's famous essay on this topic, _Discipline and
| Punish_.
|
| Foucalt has his critics, but it's not _immediately_
| obvious that the massive incarceration problem in some
| Western nations is better than public execution at the
| whim of monarchs. And some forms of torture, Foucalt
| argued, have changed from the theatrical and public to
| the more subdued torture of everyday lives of prison
| inmates.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Remove the US from the list of western countries and it
| must be better today, yes?
| watwut wrote:
| Murder clearance rates went DOWN last decades in USA.
| Less of major crime is solved.
|
| Plus majority of it never went through tria, because
| trial is just too much risk. So, there are not all that
| many actual checks and balances
| lm28469 wrote:
| That's a multi faceted problem. Murder rates also were
| halves since the 80s in the US, it's not necessarily the
| same type of criminality
|
| In other countries the clearance rates are as high as
| ever. The US is an exception in many aspects in the West,
| closer to third world countries depending on what metric
| you look at
|
| > overall, findings showed that the clearance rate in
| Finland and Switzerland in the years of analysis was very
| high, in some years of the analysis even reaching 100
| percent. Internationally, these rates are extraordinary
| high, even in comparison with other European countries
| such as Italy (67 percent and, later, 78 percent) ,
| Estonia (80 percent), England & Wales (85 percent) and
| France (80 percent)
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708187
| 648...
| verinus wrote:
| well, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some
| only perceived.
|
| So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.
| moffkalast wrote:
| To be fair, for much of history there weren't enough
| resources for everyone, much less for keeping people fed
| for free in a prison for decades. For serious crimes you
| just got executed as soon as possible.
| saalweachter wrote:
| We also no longer have exile as a punishment.
| yawpitch wrote:
| Their source could be your source, which you seem to be very
| seriously misreading.
|
| > As the global population grew 21 per cent, between 2000 and
| 2019, the number of prisoners worldwide jumped by more than
| 25 per cent, according to the UNODC data.
|
| So, worldwide trend is upward.
|
| > While Northern America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern
| Europe have experienced a long-term decrease in imprisonment
| rates of up to 27 per cent, other regions and countries, such
| as Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, have seen up to
| 68 per cent growth over the last two decades, the study
| revealed.
|
| So apparently your definition of "western countries" includes
| sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and all of
| Australia and New Zealand?
|
| Overall your own source supports their point and contradicts
| your own.
| seszett wrote:
| > _So apparently your definition of "western countries"
| includes sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and
| all of Australia and New Zealand?_
|
| To be honest the text you are quoting doesn't talk about
| Western Europe at all, and I think if you exclude Western
| Europe, then "Northern America + Eastern Europe" is most of
| what remains of "western countries". Australia and New
| Zealand, while part of western countries, are so small that
| they are basically insignificant for statistics.
|
| The data in the source[0], though, says the number of
| prisoners in Europe as a whole (as well as Northern
| America) has decreased (Figures 10, 12, and 13) confirming
| what GP said. Eastern Europe is quoted specifically because
| the decrease has been much more important (basically, the
| numbers are becoming similar to Western Europe).
|
| There's no question that the trend in the West has been a
| decrease in incarceration rate, with Australia and New
| Zealand clear outliers.
|
| [0]https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-
| analysis/statistics...
| yawpitch wrote:
| If you exclude Western Europe and simply ignore Australia
| and New Zealand you've abandoned any reasonable
| conception of "the West" altogether.
|
| Regardless, cherry-picking even such an incredibly
| gerrymandered "West" ignores the entire point of the
| source: the human population in prison has risen faster
| than the human population itself... pointing to minor
| improvements in the world's largest prison state and what
| remains of the ex-Soviet gulag system states while
| ignoring considerably larger regressions in, for example,
| a nation colonized specifically to be a prison does
| nothing to contradict that fact.
| seszett wrote:
| The data (linked in my comment) shows that incarceration
| rates have decreased in _all of Europe_ as well as _all
| of Northern America_ and increased in Australia and New
| Zealand.
|
| If you consider "the West" to be (as is commonly
| admitted) Europe, Northern America, Australia and New
| Zealand (with maybe Japan included) then incarceration
| rates have decreased in the West. Even if they have
| increased in minor countries (AU + NZ).
|
| You're getting stuck on a sentence of the summary that
| talks about a subset of the data, but I'm not sure why. I
| also have no idea what you mean about a "nation colonized
| to be a prison", but honestly this looks to me as if
| you're just trying to push some idea without vocalizing
| it, which is a bit off-putting. If you're talking about
| the US, then yes it does have a much higher incarceration
| rate than anywhere else in the West, but it's a clear
| exception within the West and it is still decreasing.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Unfortunate. It frankly needs to go up in Western countries
| to get to half-decent crime rates.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >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 private corporations
| paying well-below-market rates for prison labour benefit.
| tikhonj wrote:
| _Politicians_ benefit from locking people up because it gives
| them an easily measurable way to look "tough on crime".
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Good point.
| SamPatt wrote:
| You think states don't benefit from spending more money?
| They're just like other organizations who try to expand their
| budgets year over year.
|
| Except they can force people to pay them more, all they need
| is plausible justification (like combating crime, or
| terrorists, or drugs, or viruses, or whatever the current
| societal scare happens to be about).
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| 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.
| JTbane wrote:
| Yep and there are some specific product that rely heavily
| on prison labor- license plates come to mind.
| Clubber wrote:
| Also, keep in mind, it costs the _taxpayers_ money, not the
| people running the criminal justice system. They 're
| motivated by climbing the ladder and scorekeeping.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| My oldest son has special needs. He's 2e -- gifted and learning
| disabled -- and has a serious medical condition associated with
| being very underweight.
|
| I put him in preschool to get him to talk. He could use sentences
| but wasn't.
|
| At the start of kindergarten, first, second and third grade, I
| spoke with the teacher, explained he was difficult, let them know
| I welcomed communication on any issue. They were thrilled and
| relieved. Parents are often part of the problem.
|
| By fourth grade, my son was no longer obviously "the weird kid."
| That teacher reported me to the social worker for letting him
| know up front my child was difficult and please don't hesitate to
| discuss things with me.
|
| The social worker called me, we talked for a bit. She knew both
| my kids. Laughed it off as a silly misunderstanding. Months
| later, his teacher let me know he did eventually get the memo
| that my child had quirky interpretations of social things.
|
| After my son finally got a proper diagnosis for his medical
| issue, he gained twenty pounds in one year and this did wonders
| for his social skills. Then he lost five pounds.
|
| He still felt better than he ever had and neither of us were
| concerned. His medical team implied I was in danger of being
| reported to children's services as an abusive mother.
|
| Because his condition predisposes people to being very
| underweight, pediatric clinics for the condition routinely
| include a dietitian and yet the standard recommended diet is
| "junk food" because it's high salt, high fat, high calorie and
| cheap.
|
| I had not been feeding him junk food, but I dutifully put a big
| bowl of snacks in the middle of the coffee table. He regained 2.5
| pounds, they decided that was adequate and didn't need more
| follow up visits.
|
| We got home and, with no longer being under threat of being
| turned in as a neglectful or abusive parent, the first thing he
| did was hand me the bowl and tell me "We are _never_ doing this
| again. I feel terrible! "
|
| We resumed feeding him a high quality diet in line with the high
| fat, high salt, high calorie recommendations.
|
| It's awful to be so protective of your children and be accused of
| abusing them based on no real evidence. I wish this project well.
| raducu wrote:
| What was the medical issue for your child being underweight, if
| you could please share that?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| He has a form of cystic fibrosis.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is personal attack, trolling, or both,
| but posting this way will get you banned here, so please
| don't do it again.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules, we'd appreciate it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Then he lost five pounds. He still felt better than he ever
| had and neither of us were concerned. His medical team implied
| I was in danger of being reported to children 's services as an
| abusive mother._
|
| But wasn't that valid cause for concern, especially for someone
| who should be a growing boy? If being underweight was a serious
| medical concern for him, losing 5 pounds seems like a big
| flashing red warning that something could be going wrong.
|
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding your story, but from what you've
| written, it sounds to me like their intervention successfully
| ensured he was eating enough when he wasn't before?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| You are missing the part where I harmed his health to comply
| with their expectations. He was fine and does better on a
| high quality diet than on a junk food diet.
|
| Weight isn't the only metric that matters.
| hezralig wrote:
| What do you consider a high quality diet? What would meals
| for a day look like to you?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| If you haven't already: find the accusation in your
| comment.
| rendall wrote:
| I think there is a class of internet bully that clusters
| around stories like this, not unlike the "think of the
| children crowd" mentioned in the article.
| LastTrain wrote:
| It's a very simple question - one that my kid's
| pediatrician asks during almost every visit. Weird that
| you take it as an accusation.
| clipsy wrote:
| What's weird is that you apparently don't understand the
| difference between being asked that question by your
| child's pediatrician vs a random stranger on the
| internet.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The question is not weird in the context of telling the
| story on a messageboard.
|
| If we were applying the default "random stranger" rules,
| the story never would have been shared in the first
| place.
| ahoka wrote:
| The answer can make the story wildly different.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Harmed his health by what metric?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The problem is that the phrase "a valid concern" would lead
| me to think "something doctors and parents should consult on
| (also with the child themself!) and determine if there is
| cause for alarm, and if so decide collaboratively what the
| proper course of action is." Sure! Of course! That's what you
| do with valid health concerns, right?
|
| What it actually means is "something for which social workers
| will decide whether to take your child away from you for".
| That's a pretty big escalation from a "valid concern", but
| one that happens if "the system" decides you are a target. "A
| valid concern" is in that case a code word for "credible
| presumptive evidence of child abuse". A child being
| underweight is a valid thing to be concerned about, it is not
| on it's own credible presumptive evidence of abusive
| parenting, no.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Abusers sometimes take their victims elsewhere - new doc,
| new town, new state - when people start getting suspicious.
| The victim may also be retaliated against; accused of
| trying to get help. There's a risk to consulting someone
| you suspect might be the perpetrator.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| There's also a pretty big risk to assuming abuse when _it
| isn 't present_, removing a child from their parents is
| an action causing great trauma to the child. Even just
| putting the family through an adversarial process where
| removal is threatened can be very traumatic to all
| involved. If there is a challenging health issue going on
| too, adding all that on top is actually adding barriers
| to addressing the challenging health issue, and is
| harmful.
|
| The solution to reducing risk and harm is not to always
| err on the side of assuming abuse and making families
| prove otherwise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's no perfect answer; there will _always_ be
| judgement calls that turn out to be wrong, even when made
| in good faith. You 're correct that false accusations of
| abuse can be devastating to families; missing _real_
| abuse is similiarly devastating.
|
| As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm glad I don't
| have to make these calls.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| If the parent is abusive, trying to get their cooperation
| in fixing the problem may be an effective means to out
| them.
|
| They had absolutely no reason to believe I was abusing
| him. Most likely, they were just trying to cover their
| own butts and err in that direction rather than in the
| direction of "what's best for this child?"
|
| That's without getting into larger concerns of "What on
| earth is wrong with the world that a junk food diet is
| the medically recommended diet for a serious medical
| condition?"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm speaking more generally than your specific case.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I know. I'm trying to engage you in good faith.
|
| I was molested as a child. I know a fair amount about
| abuse.
|
| There isn't always a clear bright line between ignorance
| and abuse. Assuming the worst can make the problem worse.
|
| People tend to not be paragons of virtue who have all the
| answers for everything they run into. Some people can be
| helped to become better parents.
|
| I thought long and hard about that while sending care
| packages to a couple of welfare moms. Declaring them
| unfit moms and having their kids taken and placed in
| foster care wasn't some magic solution that guaranteed a
| fabulous outcome, so I chose to try to help them succeed
| to whatever degree I could, on a limited budget and from
| a distance.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I'm not questioning anything about your story. I'm just
| curious: what types of "junk food" were they
| recommending?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| They routinely recommend pro inflammatory foods like
| peanut butter. It's an inflammatory condition.
|
| They recommend sugary foods. It's a condition that puts
| one at high risk of diabetes.
|
| They recommend ice cream as a high fat, high calorie
| food. It's a condition that predisposes people to having
| trouble tolerating milk and milk products, especially
| from cows.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Thank you for the additional details.
| User23 wrote:
| Is this condition so rare that naming it will doxx your
| child? If not why not name it so others can add it to
| their mental toolbox in case it affects them or those
| they love?
| ivalm wrote:
| Sounds like Nephropathic Cystinosis, but honestly
| provided info isn't enough to diagnose in its own.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I doubt the proper answer to this risk is to assume
| abuse. I don't mean to say the answer is easy but the
| described behavior towards this person for how they try
| to help their child is sickening.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Any approach here will have bad results on a population-
| level; there's no perfect answer. I'm very glad I'm not
| personally responsible for decisions that could destroy
| families or doom kids to torture if the wrong judgement
| call is made.
| fusslo wrote:
| since everyone else is sharing an anecdote:
|
| When I was 14 or so I fell off my dirt bike and broke my arm,
| both bones in my forearm.
|
| Went to the hospital. About 5 people asked me how it happened
| taking about an hour, while I was WRITHING in pain.
|
| Finally, I complained to the right nurse and she got me something
| for the pain. It was just enough to stop crying, not enough to
| stop feeling it.
|
| I later found out that the intake nurse was concerned about
| abuse.
|
| I was dressed head to toe in dirtbike gear. I was a 150lb 14 yr
| old. my mother was 110 lbs.
|
| They delayed treatment so multiple people, nurses, doctors, and
| hospital staff could all ask me what happened and compare if I
| told them the same thing.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| They may delay treatment for reasons other than just asking; my
| son was in the ER for 4 hours with a significant laceration (it
| resulted in two layers of over 2 dozen sutures each) before he
| was given anything as the nurses were not allowed to administer
| an analgesic (much less pain killers) until a doctor had
| examined him, and it took 4 hours for the doctor to get to him.
|
| At no point was there any sign of the staff acting like there
| might be abuse or neglect involved.
| bell-cot wrote:
| THIS. It very often seems as if the medical/social system has
| "barricaded itself" inside it own ideological/psychiatric
| obsessions with the _idea_ of child abuse, and is blind to
| reality. Let alone the actual welfare of the child.
| volkl48 wrote:
| While I certainly don't agree with delaying your
| treatment....your size/weight vs your mother's is irrelevant -
| just because she's who brought you in doesn't mean that she's
| the only person who could have abused you.
|
| For all they know you've got a father or uncle or whoever
| that's huge and has anger problems who broke it.
|
| One abusive family member and a partner who's covering
| for/trying to make up for their behavior (and may be being
| abused themselves) is a pretty common type of abusive
| situation.
| losthobbies wrote:
| There was a infamous case in the UK around SBS:
|
| https://3dc.org.uk/press-release-preliminary-study-of-uk-sha...
|
| Louise Woodward was the nanny involved and the court case was
| televised. Was huge at the time I remember.
| rossant wrote:
| Yes, Innocence Project cofounder Barry Scheck was the defense
| attorney in the Woodward case and he wrote a long foreword to
| our book about it. It starts like this:
|
| "After a Quarter of a Century, Have Any Lessons Been Learned
| from the Trial of Louise Woodward?
|
| Twenty-five years ago, the Louise Woodward trial in Boston (the
| 'nanny murder case') thrust shaken baby syndrome (SBS) into
| headlines across the globe, raising worldwide consciousness
| about the hypothesis that infants and toddlers could be
| seriously brain injured, even killed, by violent shaking.
| Although the case was tried in the early days of SBS
| prosecutions, the underlying science was fiercely disputed and
| litigated at trial. A quarter of a century later, although
| science has advanced, the issues remain just as hotly disputed
| and poorly understood, and yet parents and caregivers continue
| to be prosecuted and families torn apart based on the
| hypothesis."
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The worst part here is: He spent months researching 500 medical
| papers to even realize this was a problem. No way in hell will a
| single defense lawyer get someone to be able to research enough
| to figure this out. As stated, how many people are in jail or
| lost their kids due to something that didn't actually happen. And
| how many people don't know that a minor bump in the head for a
| baby could be life threatening, but we just mark it as SIDS. And
| even worse, no medical doctor will go this hard trying to figure
| out how to defend a person they believe murdered a baby.
|
| It is the perfect combination of crap.
|
| Cyrille Rossant may save a lot of lives, in both parents and
| children, if this becomes common knowledge.
| raducu wrote:
| Similar case in Denmark/Romania where a baby was taken from his
| romanian parents because of the shaken baby syndrome, parents
| spent time in jail, but the hemorage continued over time so
| they had to concede it wasn't the shaken baby syndromd.
| tokai wrote:
| Even if the kids hemorrhaging continued, it was brought to
| the ER initially with fractures in the right side of the
| skull.
| raducu wrote:
| I did not know this detail, I know the Danish state offered
| apologies, the charges were dropped and the child was
| returned to the parents.
| tokai wrote:
| Yeah, nobody know the exact parts of the case. As its
| semi-secret (to protect the child and parents I guess).
| While the parents were cleared, this case is definitely
| not appropriate to this discussion as it was definitely
| not only hemorrhaging that started it. If a hospital gets
| a toddler with fractures on their skull, society should
| damn well figure out how it got them and stop it from
| happening again.
| grog454 wrote:
| > If a hospital gets a toddler with fractures on their
| skull, society should damn well figure out how it got
| them and stop it from happening again.
|
| What a leap (the kind the article is calling out by the
| way). Do you really think all causes for toddler skull
| fractures are a societal problem?
| ameister14 wrote:
| I do.
|
| If a child has a serious injury the circumstances should
| be examined, as it should be quite rare for children to
| have serious injuries.
|
| That's why places have Child Death and Serious Injury
| Review Committees.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| As a toddler, my daughter fell out of her bed from a
| height of less than 18 inches and broke her collar-bone.
| It seems plausible to me that if she had landed on her
| head rather than her shoulder, she could have fractured
| her skull. I'm not sure that society needs to be in the
| business of preventing all falls from such a small
| height!
| paradox242 wrote:
| I fully understand where you are coming from, but have
| you had a toddler?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > it was brought to the ER initially with fractures in the
| right side of the skull.
|
| Just to defuse this a bit. My #4 used to collect skull
| fractures. He'd slip away in a nanosecond and would be 50'
| above us two heartbeats later. We put him in a padded
| helmet for a year or so. It stayed on sometimes.
|
| As an adult he can still disappear in an empty room.
| cornholio wrote:
| The trouble is: shaken baby syndrome is real and well
| documented. Because the crime is so abhorrent, people
| strongly want to believe the diagnostic tools to be much more
| sensitive and accurate than they really seem to be.
|
| It's the classic "N guilty men" problem, aka Blackstone's
| ratio: if you risk putting one innocent person in jail, how
| many guilty people you need to catch to make it morally
| justifiable? 5, 10? 100?
|
| You have to pick a number, or else no kind of criminal
| justice can exist.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| In the article it clearly states that shaking does not
| cause the hemorrhage that's currently considered "shaken
| baby syndrome". It literally says there aren't documented
| cases where the shaking was captured on tape/testified and
| the symptoms present at the same time.
|
| It's more likely that a fall (or being thrown) would cause
| the symptoms.
| hoseja wrote:
| I read it as no cases where shaking caused ONLY the
| retinal/subdural haemorrhage, without any other trauma.
| rossant wrote:
| That's indeed what I said, but I was cautious. I'd have
| to dig into the latest literature to be sure, but I don't
| remember seeing even 1 case where shaking _with no
| impact_ was independently witnessed or videotaped, and
| was shown to cause retinal /subdural haemorrhage, with or
| without any other form of trauma.
|
| In any case, these situations are extremely rare, much
| more than those involving any kind of head impact.
| robbiep wrote:
| You need to work on your comprehension
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make
| your substantive points without that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The better way to think of what you said is:
|
| If toyota cars unintentionally accelerate and kill people,
| but sometimes people mistakenly accelerate and kill people.
| If I am driving a toyota and accelerate and kill a person,
| if 100% of all cops/investigators believe the first case
| doesn't exist, and the second case is the only possible
| answer, I will be thrown in jail without a second thought;
| my life is destroyed, and it wasn't even my fault.
|
| But more than that, we don't even know what the ratios are,
| is it 90% / 10%? is it 10% / 90%? is it 50/50? Because
| everyone believes it is 0%/100% we can't make the "N guilty
| men" decision at all, so we need a hard stop, evidence, and
| re-start.
|
| I know you were downvoted, but I think your thoughts are
| exactly the problem I am trying to point out. So thank you
| for commenting on it.
| nelox wrote:
| Try that in a court which doesn't recognise the reliability of
| evidence provided by an "expert" witness.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| bombcar wrote:
| I've heard credible rumors that SIDS is the "parent
| accidentally killed their child but we won't tell them that"
| polite fiction.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Who have you heard these rumors from?
|
| How did you determine them to be credible?
|
| My assumption is that any citation to a rumor should be
| totally dismissed if these questions can't be answered.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It seems to me that this rumor is just an alternate framing
| of the original commenter's assertion that "a minor bump in
| the head for a baby could be life threatening, but we just
| mark it as SIDS". I think it's fair to be skeptical of
| both, but it's worth reflecting on how the same factual
| assertions can come across as either "science-informed
| speculation" or "crazy unsubstantiated rumor" depending on
| how you say them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. And imagine you're a doctor, and you have a dead
| child in front of you, crying parents, and a form to fill
| out. No possible way of filling out the form brings the
| child back to life, and one way makes it as easy as
| possible for everyone, and another results in potentially
| up to jail time.
|
| Now do this repeatedly during your long and illustrious
| career.
| sarchertech wrote:
| My wife is a pediatric ER doctor. That's not how that
| works. If suspected SIDS case/unexplained death comes in,
| it would be handed over to the child abuse team and the
| medical examiner would determine cause of death. The
| medical examiner is detached from crying parents.
|
| What you're talking about would require a lot more than
| just one well meaning doctor.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > or "crazy unsubstantiated rumor" depending on how you
| say them.
|
| "How it was said" was literally presented as
| unsubstantiated rumor. It's not worth reflecting that
| when someone says "I heard a rumor that X..." it sounds
| like an unsubstantiated rumor. It's just the basic
| structure of English language.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| This article is entirely about _debunking_ rumors and looking
| at actual scientific evidence to correct people 's
| misconceptions -- misconceptions among doctors and law
| enforcement that have ruined people's lives.
|
| So please don't bring "rumors" into a discussion here. That's
| exactly the kind of harmful behavior the article is trying to
| fight against.
| slashdev wrote:
| Don't say horrible things like that unless you can really
| back them up. Think of how a grief stricken parent might feel
| after reading that.
| colechristensen wrote:
| SIDS most likely does not exist. "Unknown cause of death"
| should be preferred.[1] If you review the literature, there
| has been a definite increase in pushback against "SIDS"
| instead trying to assign causes of death with known
| mechanisms. I can't find a great reference but there is one
| out there that proposes with evidence that the most
| prevalent actual cause of death labeled "SIDS" is
| accidental suffocation.
|
| It is so emotionally charged though that there is and has
| been great hesitation to assign this cause of death because
| of the emotional effect on the parents.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10571752/
| jacquesm wrote:
| One of my children had a serious problem right after
| birth with breathing (central apnea). He'd stop breathing
| suddenly while sleeping. If this had happened at home he
| likely would not have made it, but the hospital was very
| alert to it and after two weeks with many such episodes
| it suddenly clicked and then it never happened again.
|
| If we had taken him home without knowing about the
| condition I'm pretty sure a 'SIDS' cause of death would
| have been one of the possible outcomes regardless of the
| actual cause (which would have been very hard to
| determine after the fact).
| slashdev wrote:
| Thank god the hospital caught it!
| jacquesm wrote:
| They were really caught out by it themselves if not for
| an unrelated issue they would have sent us home. So luck
| played a huge part here. That's also two weeks that aged
| me a couple of years. But compared to what I saw some of
| the other parents there deal with we were the lucky ones
| in more ways than one.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's the whole point here, isn't it: that 'what you've
| heard' isn't credible at all. There is no 'polite fiction'
| here, what there is is people looking for culprits when there
| are none. Does that meant that all such cases are accidents?
| No, because we know for a fact that some people really do
| hurt infants for whatever reason. But the evidence is
| apparently such that a large fraction of the cases that were
| thought to be criminal in actuality were not. So don't go on
| rumors or polite fictions when lives are at stake. Do the
| legwork before ruining people's lives.
| eitally wrote:
| The ironic thing here is that these sorts of innocuous bumps
| and minor traumas regularly lead to severe medical
| complications and deaths in older children & adults, too. The
| only difference here is that babies & toddlers are too young to
| be able to verbalize and advocate for themselves in ways that
| most adults recognize & respect.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > No way in hell will a single defense lawyer get someone to be
| able to research enough to figure this out.
|
| Why would we have to? We can just hire M. Rossant.
| rossant wrote:
| 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
| little step in this direction.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| 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.
| rossant wrote:
| I had no idea that was possible. Thank you.
| [deleted]
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| It seems highly likely that you and your co authors are the
| some of the most expert people on the planet about this
| subject.
| Muromec wrote:
| Oh the good old, violent Easter European bias mixed into crap
| science.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37670664.
| the_af wrote:
| > _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
| discourse we are supposed to have here? This is _an honest
| question_ , I'm neither European nor a native English speaker
| and I have difficulty parsing the sentence I quoted. How on
| earth does this warrant downvotes?
| Macha wrote:
| Yes. Romanians probably get the worst of it from the
| association with Roma in general who are generally
| discriminated against, but there is generally a base level of
| anti eastern-european discrimination among western Europe
| (and especially the UK). Not that all or most western
| Europeans do this, but it's a significant enough minority
| that does that it's unavoidable.
| semanticist wrote:
| 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.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| this "are a common tactic" gets a bit old, good way to
| gatekeep certain topics.
|
| If the same "tactic" is used, why not come up with a good
| counter? A point stands whether it's being asked
| disingenuously or not.
| the_af wrote:
| Yeah, I figured, which is why my original question
| clarified I'm not from Europe (so no vested interest) and
| that I might be genuinely missing the obvious answer. Which
| is why I was surprised by the drive-by downvote.
|
| Thankfully people have responded and now I both understand
| the sentence and the why!
| verteu wrote:
| Yes, that's what GP meant.
| thefounder wrote:
| Domestic violence is still common in Eastern Europe(i.e
| Romania) so go figure why there is a bias against Eastern
| Europeans.
| benregenspan wrote:
| Domestic violence is higher where poverty rates are higher.
| (I am not saying that poverty is the sole determinant, but
| it closely correlates). You will find pockets of higher
| domestic violence throughout the US. I don't think you can
| rationalize bias like this, people with ethnic prejudice
| will look for any apparent fact pattern to support their
| preconceived bias.
| raducu wrote:
| I could not say I ever experienced it, but I have school-aged
| relatives that moved to Germany and received all sorts of
| crap from their peers explicitly for being romanians. Not a
| race thing because they're whiter than most germans( blonde,
| white, blue eyes).
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| It's not just in Denmark, most Europeans have a negative bias
| towards Romanian immigrants (mostly because they're too
| ignorant to even know Romanians are not Roma).
| Strom wrote:
| > _because they're too ignorant to even know Romanians are
| not Roma_
|
| I don't think the term Roma has a bad association, because
| in my experience nobody but the most woke even know it.
| That is the PC term. People I've encountered just use gypsy
| or their local equivalent.
| red_admiral wrote:
| There is a skin condition called Mongolian (Blue) Spot
| (wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_spot ) that
| doctors can mistake for an infant being beaten or otherwise
| abused. It has led to a lot of cases of false accusations and
| children being forcibly removed from their parents who were
| then charged with child abuse.
|
| According to Wikipedia, as to the distribution of this
| condition,
|
| > The birthmark is prevalent among East, South, Southeast,
| North and Central Asian peoples, Indigenous Oceanians (chiefly
| Micronesians and Polynesians), certain populations in Africa,
| Amerindians, non-European Latin Americans and Caribbeans of
| mixed-race descent.
|
| So you can see how, in a Western European nation, even if no-
| one is being biased in the sense of "hating foreigners", the
| false accusations would cluster in "non-indigenous"
| populations, for want of a better word (I originally had
| "immigrants" then realised that isn't the correct split I'm
| looking for.). Personally I believe there is no defense for
| doctors, courts and social workers not knowing about this and
| checking for it before making any accusations.
|
| This doesn't seem to apply to Romanians / Eastern Europeans
| specifically, unless they have partly Asian ancestry, but it
| does show that there are conditions that can be mistaken for
| abuse that appear in some cultures more than others.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Damn that hits home. I've got a blue spot birthmark that was
| seen at elementary school which then led to child services
| showing up at home. This happened in the US and everyone
| involved was "non Indigenous."
| red_admiral wrote:
| Sorry to hear that happened to you - and I realise that
| "indigenous" in the U.S. means the opposite to some of
| Europe, sorry!
|
| I'm guessing if some kind of Commanche social worker turned
| up to look at a case of blue spot, they'd go "Yeah that's a
| birthmark, about half our children have it, our nation even
| has legends about it. Have a nice day!".
| woof wrote:
| Seems like the bias is on your part... Which is ironic, given
| the articles content....
|
| Or do you have _evidence_?
| fishnchips wrote:
| The username kinda suggests an Eastern European
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Muromets) so I read the
| post as a personal opinion that the bias exists.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not everything comes with evidence, nor is everything a court
| case. If you have experienced racism again and again though,
| you can often tell when you see it, or you can quite safely
| deduce it in a case or wrong treatment, even without hard
| proof.
| Dah00n wrote:
| And yet they are wrong, so clearly evidence was needed.
| jauzj wrote:
| [flagged]
| achenet wrote:
| If you happen to get a bit into the whole Nazi
| classification of races (don't, you almost certainly have
| something better to learn), you'll find that they made a
| distinction between Germanic "Aryan" types and Slavs.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Well, now you've learned something.
| krapp wrote:
| >Conflating racial prejudice with cultural prejudice is a
| cheap trick.
|
| Race is culture. There is no scientific or biological
| basis for the racial classifications we use. That whole
| framework was invented by European slave traders and
| imperialists to justify white supremacist ideology. At
| one point, Irish and Italian immigrants to the US weren't
| considered white. Whether Jews are white or not depends
| on one's opinion of them (they tend to become less white
| the more paranoid people become of them.) Greeks wouldn't
| be considered white by many people yet many white people
| also hold up ancient Greece as the bedrock of "white
| culture," which as a concept doesn't even really make
| sense. "Asian" defines half the human population, so
| broad as to be nearly useless. "Black" is a whole can of
| worms. None of it is scientific or objective, all of it
| is a social construct.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Racism? I didn 't know Romanians and Danes were of
| different races._
|
| Now you do. In the ideology of racism (from the 19th
| century to the Nazis and beyond) not only Romanians and
| Danes are of different races, but also
| Nordic/Germanic/Anglosaxon are of different race to
| Italians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and so on, including of
| course the Irish. With a long history of those (and more)
| not considerd "white" in the US, and being persecuted by
| the KKK and others.
|
| > _Conflating racial prejudice with cultural prejudice is
| a cheap trick._
|
| Yes, god forbid we condemn prejudice as racial when in
| fact it's just prejudice because of their "inferior"
| culture.
|
| Of course, though, those two go hand-in-hand
| historically. For example, according to Nazi racism, Jews
| had a "damaging influence" on German culture, they
| promoted various forms of decadence and so on. And of
| course every modern racist would say they don't hate
| blacks as a race, just black culture and crime and so on.
| jauzj wrote:
| [flagged]
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > If you have experienced racism again and again though,
| you can often tell when you see it, or you can quite safely
| deduce it in a case or wrong treatment, even without hard
| proof.
|
| There may be some overlap between systemic racial
| mistreatment and child abuse - however the nuances seem to
| set them far apart. I believe conflating the two makes it
| harder to get the full measure of each.
|
| It's not that they can't be compared. It's that they ought
| to be fully considered in isolation first.
| Muromec wrote:
| No, I don't have any bias, it's everybody else having biases.
| To be sure, I just checked how many times before I was biased
| (it's zero times), so I can't be now.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Wait, are there Europeans who don't acknowledge that this
| bias exists? In my experience with European colleagues and
| those who've traveled a lot there it's so universally-
| acknowledged that this would surprise me.
| RektBoy wrote:
| It also because north Europe has one of the most toxic social
| services in the world, kidnapping kids 24/7. That's basically
| their job.
| andybak wrote:
| Whatever core truth you're trying to express, wording it in
| this way isn't helpful.
| Dah00n wrote:
| No.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Seen complaints/protests like this in my country. Then the
| adult children of the lady leading these protests spoke out
| against her and pointed out she was just doing it to get a
| house and embezzling a load of GoFundMe money.
|
| This wasn't SBS though, she just kept adopting out her kids
| to devote more time to her drug habits.
| raducu wrote:
| It could be, but communication issues could also be at play,
| plus overeager doctors/social workers. In Romania they go at
| great lengths not to pull children out of family environments,
| in Denmark and other more developed countries it could be the
| opposite.
| mike_hock wrote:
| Implying ripping children out of their families willy-nilly
| is "more developed."
| haswell wrote:
| Development past a certain point is not universally a good
| thing.
|
| The term is used to describe the stages a country has been
| through, and there's plenty of evidence that as countries
| develop further, the nature of those developments may or
| may not be beneficial.
|
| Brexit, online safety and other forms of "progress" come to
| mind.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Late stage capitalism.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Its tongue in cheek. Germany is developed, but you will get
| arrested if you try to homeschool your children.
| wincy wrote:
| It's very important your children be taught whatever it
| is the government wants them to be taught! Which went
| very well for Germany in the 1930s...
| Chris2048 wrote:
| b/c it's seen as a basic right, and issue of equality to
| have access to the same level of state education. The
| concept of "your" children is something of the problem.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It could be a problem, but usually isn't.
|
| The (darkly) funny thing in the case of Germany is that
| this lack of diversity in education has created a
| generation with the fertility rate of South Korea (ie
| dying).
|
| In this case, the state creating a monoculture that
| results in the 'destruction' of the existing state goes
| to show why evolution values diversity far more than
| monocultures.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| In a lot of sci-fi, the most "developed" civilisations have
| their children raised by robots in creches.
|
| I don't think it was supposed to be aspirational.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not ripping children from actually abusive families is more
| developed. There are many cases of abuses families who need
| to lose their children, and in some those families still
| have children. There are other cases where good families
| lose their children.
|
| Note that I carefully did not say anything about what abuse
| is. Unfortunately there is no agreement and I don't want to
| get into that debate (it is well worth having, but it would
| change the direction I'm trying to go here).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > There are many cases of abuses families who need to
| lose their children, and in some those families still
| have children.
|
| A challenge is where the ripped-off children wind up, a
| foster home system with it's own abuse issues.
| raducu wrote:
| There are debatable issues, and clear cut issues -- not
| providing basic care or medical care is quite clear cut.
|
| Homeschooling is debatable, if the children are evaluated
| to be equal to their regular schooled peers, I don't
| think the child should be taken out of the family
| environment, but should be subject to further wellness
| checks by social workers.
| raducu wrote:
| I'm not implying anything other than the fact in Romania
| social workers KNOW it's very, very likely the child will
| fare worse fate in an orphanage or foster care, EVEN in
| cases that would be considered abuse in the West.
|
| Given a more developed country, I'd presume there are more
| people willing to adopt/do foster care for the right
| reasons and the social workers can regularly check upon the
| welfare of the child, thus there can be legitimate reasons
| to lower the threshold of taking a child out of a family
| setting vs a less developed country.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| That's not at all the implication.
| pyrale wrote:
| > in Denmark and other more developed countries it could be
| the opposite.
|
| Did you mean: richer?
| raducu wrote:
| I mean more developed, because a country like Saudi Arabia
| is rich but not developed imho, and there could be
| countries that are develope -- i.e. they have good
| education, infrastructure, medical care, human rights,
| clean environment etc etc and not that rich.
| [deleted]
| red75prime wrote:
| Oh. And I thought that reddit outrage over the video of a father
| throwing his son in the air was just your standard modern
| hyperprotectiveness. Actually, the father risked lawsuit as it
| stands. The lack of common sense (and knowledge of physics) is
| off-putting.
| mlindner wrote:
| Did you read the article? The article claims the reverse. That
| this is not a real problem.
| katzenversteher wrote:
| This always scared me because I don't even know what counts as
| shaking.
|
| Can you accidentally shake a baby? Can my 2 year old daughter get
| shaken baby syndrome when older children on an inflatable castle
| with her jump and bounce too wild around her (she can't jump yet
| but loves the bouncing)? I've also often seen parents throw their
| children a bit in the air and then catch them. The children like
| it and laugh.
|
| I'm not even speaking of law and police but medically. Can this
| seriously hurt my daughter?
| rossant wrote:
| I don't think you should worry too much. Abusive shaking really
| involves extreme forces. "Routine shaking" occurring during
| play is not expected to be harmful to healthy children. Games
| should be adapted to the age of children according to common
| sense.
|
| The takeaway of biomechanics studies is basically that you
| should be much more careful about accidental head impacts on
| hard surfaces.
| eep_social wrote:
| A) No, but no one can tell that you're a dog on the internet.
| Further, dogs do not dispense reliable medical advice. The op
| is a press release for a textbook covering this topic in what
| looks like excruciating detail from a wide variety of angles. I
| doubt a superior citation exists.
|
| B) Beyond that, my understanding is that once a child is past
| the infant phase where they cannot support their own head,
| they're fine. Humans are not all that delicate. Bumps and falls
| are inevitable, I don't see how we would have seen success as a
| species if the risk were outsized. And I guess we've been
| around for a while by now.
|
| C) TFA does mention this a little but it is split across a wide
| gap and is not the focus. I pulled the two quotes I think are
| relevant below.
|
| > And yet, although subdural and retinal hemorrhage may be
| caused by non-accidental trauma, especially when impact is
| involved, they simply are not specific for it: indeed, it has
| been demonstrated that a wide range of accidental events and
| medical conditions are plausible alternative causes.
| Particularly fragile infants may sustain severe head injuries
| following minor household falls. Others may suffer from genetic
| conditions, metabolic disorders, blood clotting abnormalities,
| or infections.
|
| > On the other hand, there exist dozens of documented cases of
| witness reports of shaking, videotaped shakings, and
| spontaneous admissions of shaking, but without subdural and
| retinal hemorrhage. In fact, there is virtually no known case
| of a reliably-documented event of violent shaking without
| impact of a healthy baby resulting in isolated subdural and
| retinal hemorrhage (additional markers of trauma would be
| expected in such cases). In contrast, there have been numerous
| cases of videotaped or witnessed short falls resulting in these
| very medical findings, considered "impossible" by the shaking
| hypothesis.
|
| So it's like they say: it's not the fall that gets you, it's
| when you land.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Generally throwing kids around (within reason) is absolutely
| safe, specially at +2yrs. Rough play is very much part of
| development for all mammals including us.
|
| Perhaps something to help you cope with this is that our brain
| although fragile has a lot of redundancy around it.
|
| On a fall or bounce our neck will decelerate our fall/bounce,
| there is no need to be an athlete, our muscles have a
| contraction reflex if they are violently streched (myotatic
| reflex), less so for very young babies with weak neck muscles
| (think less than 6/9 months).
|
| Then our skull is filled with fluid which has inertia so the
| force on the skull is not directly transmitted to the brain.
| You have to slush the liquid around quite a bit before your
| brain experiences any meaningful force.
|
| Effectively it is only with some extreme force or internal
| bleeding compressing the brain that brain damage would occur.
| stef25 wrote:
| My kids love it when they come running toward me and I pick
| them up and in one swoop throw them on to my (big) bed. I'm
| always holding back because I see their head snap back to
| land on the mattress, it's that "violent" head-moving-back
| thing that gives me the fear, so I stopped.
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| a core part of my son and i's relationship is me yeeting
| him on soft pieces of furniture (he's 3)! He is very
| physical and likes to roughhouse - he injuries himself a
| lot! Little kids really are made of rubber
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| The article as I interpreted says that there is no recorded
| case where you can get shaken baby syndrome and the sharking
| was recorded on tape or declared in front of the police, that
| being said, if your child has some pathology, they might be at
| risk with even a minor fall
| barsonme wrote:
| You misread the article. The article states that there aren't
| any SBS cases with _only_ "isolated subdural and retinal
| hemorrhage."
| amluto wrote:
| re: the bouncy houses and such. Other than kids banging into
| each other, this never seemed like much of a head or brain
| injury risk. But watch out for knees! Trampolines with more
| than one person on them are incredibly dangerous, and bouncy
| houses seem likely to be pretty dangerous with occupants of
| widely varying sizes. The specific issue is that the floor may
| move abruptly and unexpectedly when someone is trying to land,
| causing a potentially severe knee injury.
|
| If you're in a bouncy house with kids, consider avoiding any
| bouncing yourself.
| CMCDragonkai wrote:
| To protect against all possible harm against your child,
| perhaps consider wrapping them in a giant balloon so they are
| isolated from all possible outside influences.
|
| We either accept the randomness of fate or we live in self-made
| prisons.
| gardenmud wrote:
| I don't think this person is asking to protect against all
| possible harm. I find it strange that you seem to think it is
| unreasonable to not want your baby shaken so hard they die,
| and to want to clearly know how much force that is.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| When I was getting ready to turn dad for the first time, I read a
| few books on pregnancy, children and parenting. My trust on
| medicine dropped substantially when I discovered that doctors
| have poor notion of statistics, so they take for granted improper
| studies results.
|
| I remember one classic one is the "no coffee when pregnant", the
| study says this causes problems, the test was performed on rats
| and by feeding them coffee in the amount of 3/4 of their body
| weight. We can agree that with this amount, it's reasonable it
| could cause problems. Very different from one cup of coffee
| though.
|
| The other study that was done is about Amniocentesis, this one is
| more interesting the chance of miscarriage is considered 0.1% but
| this was before the operation was performed with a live
| ultrasound to look at the needle while performing it, which
| (probably) makes a big difference. Before, doctors performed an
| ultrasound and then went in blind.
|
| There was also a serious bias towards a certain type of
| population. But of course doctors don't bring this up at all.
|
| Last thing is sids, it's a terrible type of diagnosis that pushes
| parents against the instinct of sleeping with their children,
| even though this is commonly done in non-western cultures and can
| save a lot of pain to the parents and give a lot of security to
| the child. Do your research though, medical community reports
| risks and I'm no doctor, just a dad who read a few books.
|
| Glad my children are healthy. Every time I read about some
| illness for children I feel an incredible weight on my heart
| cjrp wrote:
| Has SIDS been linked to co-sleeping? I thought the risks of co-
| sleeping were more around accidentally rolling on or
| suffocating the baby.
| lqet wrote:
| That is also what we were told after birth.
|
| My personal opinion is that the advantages of co-sleeping far
| outweigh the risks. It is much less stressful for both the
| parents and the baby. My wife simply slept topless, turned
| (half-sleeping) to our baby whenever it was crying, and
| immediately fell back asleep.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| works for dad too
| lesam wrote:
| Newer research shows a good chunk of SIDS cases actually
| _are_ likely suffocation from various causes.
|
| That's why the SIDS reduction measures are mostly 'sleep on
| the back, in an empty crib, with nothing soft around'.
|
| But it's much easier to tell a grieving parent that there's
| nothing they could have done, than that their baby got
| unlucky and suffocated to death.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| You are speaking facts, but it runs into the medical
| problem of "overdiagnosis" where the treatment can be worse
| than the disease.
|
| Swaddling the baby and forcing it to sleep on its back, may
| have a tiny statistical benefit for SIDS, but it causes
| tons of problems at a time when people are taxed to the
| limit of their abilities.
|
| We could reduce the incident of breast cancer by removing
| every woman's breasts, but that would be an improper risk
| assessment.
|
| The biggest factor linked to SIDS is poverty, and after
| that it's stuff like going to bed while under the influence
| of drugs and smoking.
| omnibrain wrote:
| And as soon as your baby can turn itself you have no more
| influence in which position it sleeps anyway.
| seszett wrote:
| > _I remember one classic one is the "no coffee when pregnant",
| the study says this causes problems, the test was performed on
| rats and by feeding them coffee in the amount of 3/4 of their
| body weight. We can agree that with this amount, it's
| reasonable it could cause problems. Very different from one cup
| of coffee though._
|
| Honestly I don't know which study you're talking about, and I'm
| not trying to question what you're saying (such studies indeed
| often use exaggerated amounts because it's more likely to show
| effects, but it can skew the results of course) but I just
| found it interesting that depending on what "feeding them
| coffee in the amount of 3/4 of their body weight" means, well
| over a pregnancy it's easy to consume 3/4 of one's body weight
| in coffee.
|
| It means about 150 mL coffee per day for a woman weighing 55
| kg, over 9 months.
|
| About SIDS and sleeping with the children in the same bed, if I
| remember correctly (it's been some time since I had to read
| about this) the _very large_ majority of cases happened with
| parents who either smoke or are obese. I think I couldn 't find
| precise stats just for non-smoking, non-obese parents but it
| seems like SIDS basically didn't happen in this case when co-
| sleeping. It also almost never happens with immigrant parents
| for some reason (even though they are statistically more likely
| to practice co-sleeping, here in Europe).
| noodlenotes wrote:
| I'm a light sleeper and I feel like I have an awareness of
| everything nearby when I'm asleep (like I used to fall asleep
| with an open laptop in bed during college without knocking
| into it). I have a feeling co-sleeping wouldn't be an issue
| for me, but with all the dire warnings I'm afraid to risk it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I'm a light sleeper and I feel like I have an awareness
| of everything nearby when I'm asleep
|
| You absolutely don't have awareness of everything nearby
| when you're asleep. You are inherently incapable of even
| determining this because you're sleeping. I'm sure you
| react to some stimuli but that doesn't mean you can expect
| yourself to react to every potential stimuli that you would
| want to.
| amluto wrote:
| SIDS has all manner of interesting and unexpected demographic
| correlations. I'm not convinced anyone knows what to make of
| them.
| TheGeminon wrote:
| That's the problem with anything that is defined by the
| symptoms, rather than the cause. As soon as you find
| definitive evidence of what causes a subset of SIDS, it's
| no longer really SIDS but "improper bed safety" or
| "undiagnosed genetic condition".
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| The covariates are awkward and because they correspond so
| strongly with parental traits, the possibility exists that
| the kids are dying because of dysfunctional parental
| behaviors specifically.
| [deleted]
| gilbetron wrote:
| When my wife was pregnant 15 years ago, I did a lot of similar
| reading about various things. One was home vs hospital birth,
| and at that time at least, there was a strong vibe of "home
| birth is best birth" going around. Many people linked to a
| study (which I can no longer find!) in Norway maybe? It was a
| big study that "showed" that home birth was safer than hospital
| birth. However, if you dug into the study, you'd find one
| particular interesting nugget: if any of the home birth
| participants experience any negative medical event, _even
| during delivery_ , they were _removed_ from the study. It was
| preposterous. In the end, all the study said was, "home births
| that happened without incident were safer than hospital
| births", or, in other words, "safe births are safer than non-
| safe births".
| Sanzig wrote:
| The home birth obsession makes me so angry. My wife had a
| really bad postpartum hemorrhage when our daughter was born.
| Thankfully, we were in the hospital, so the obstetrics team
| was able to stop the bleeding and get her stabilized. She'd
| have likely died if it was a home birth.
|
| What's even crazier is that in most of the US, midwives only
| need a high school diploma and a midwifery certificate - or
| in many states, no education is required at all as the title
| "midwife" is not protected. The vast majority of the rest of
| the developed world requires midwives to either be
| professional nurses with additional training in midwifery, or
| to have a special four year midwifery degree (eg: here in
| Canada, midwifery is a bachelor's degree). Many parents in
| the US who opt for a home birth are likely unaware of how
| underqualified many American midwives are compared to their
| international counterparts to respond to an obstetric
| emergency.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| You should see how the second hand smoke studies upon which all
| other second hand smoke studies were based were done - very
| similar methodology - cotton swabs were saturated with
| combustion residues from hundreds of cigarettes, making them
| into tarry masses, which were then applied to 100% of the
| bodies of infant rats, every day for several weeks - and they
| were then observed for developmental abnormalities. The
| discussion then explicitly states that this should not be taken
| as a human analogue, as the rats were seen to lick the residue
| off their bodies, thus consuming all of it, and that further
| research would be needed.
|
| Further research was of course done - on rats - with much the
| same methodology.
|
| Medicine is really prone to falling for this sort of thing -
| and it's honestly no great shock, recalling the calibre of
| people at school who went on to become doctors. I studied
| physics, for Christ's sake, and knew more about metabolic
| pathways than third year med students who I would help cram.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I think it's both funny and sad that you're doing the exact
| same thing as the "bad" doctors in TFA and then are on here
| commenting about it. A quick search on Google Scholar for
| "caffeine pregnancy" reveals a number of studies that show a
| non-trivial link _in humans_ to increased miscarriage chances,
| at levels of consumption that realistically occur with heavy
| coffee drinkers. I.e. your conclusion is not so clear-cut and
| is based on one (admittedly bad science) thing you read.
| Example [1][2]
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00029...
|
| [2]
| https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/54/7/203/1...
| scythe wrote:
| From your second link:
|
| >The results of this literature review suggest that heavy
| caffeine use (>= 300 mg per day) during pregnancy is
| associated with small reductions in infant birth weight that
| may be especially detrimental to premature or low-birth-
| weight infants. Some researchers also document an increased
| risk of spontaneous abortion associated with caffeine
| consumption prior to and during pregnancy. _However,
| overwhelming evidence indicates that caffeine is not a human
| teratogen, and that caffeine appears to have no effect on
| preterm labor and delivery._
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I don't think that's fair toward me: the bad doctors never
| told me "do your research, form your opinion". They were
| always clear cut, they looked up on us for sleeping with our
| children and they "checked" the breastfeeding checkmark at
| the hospital even if my wife lamented pain during it and
| turned out my daughter had a really bad lip/tongue tie that
| took a month to be solved (with surgery). Notice that medical
| personnel even told her "you have to endure it, it's normal",
| as her breasts were cracking and she couldn't breastfeed
| anymore (had to pump).
|
| I explicitly said, do your research at the end of the
| message.
|
| P. S. The book might have been one of the following, I can't
| remember:
|
| Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is
| Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know (The ParentData
| Series Book 1) from Emily Oyster
|
| What to expect when you are expecting
|
| I think it's the first one. I read many at the same time, so
| it's hard to remember which one had the information.
| derbOac wrote:
| The problem that became very salient to me dealing with
| miscarriage is that women who have healthy pregnancies are
| also more likely to have problems with morning sickness, and
| are more likely to avoid things like coffee that are likely
| to make them feel even more nauseous. Women who have troubled
| pregnancies that are more likely to end in miscarriage are
| less likely to feel nauseous and therefore continue to drink
| and eat things as before.
|
| So it's possible caffeine consumption is a sign of a troubled
| pregnancy rather than a cause of it. I'm sure there's a point
| where caffeine becomes problematic but that could be said of
| a lot of things.
|
| There's a paper in NEJM or JAMA that pointed to this as a
| likely explanation but it's been a few years and don't have
| time to look for it now. I think they were looking at timing
| of caffeine consumption and nausea symptoms?
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| > As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory
| reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody of
| David. Thanks to our incredibly effective defense lawyer, we were
| cleared of all charges within two months, during which we stayed
| at the hospital 24/7 with David until we sorted out the legal
| procedures.
|
| Holy shit. Parents bring baby to ER ... results reveal that baby
| was shaken (article later confirms this was not the case) ...
| parents lose custody for 2 months. Horror story.
| roughly wrote:
| And:
|
| > [O]ur nanny was eventually cleared of all charges, but it
| took four years for the court to recognize my son's medical
| condition (a rare occurrence in France, as I later discovered)
| during which we were forbidden to speak to her and she was
| forbidden to approach children, thus losing her means of
| livelihood.
| jollyllama wrote:
| What's the outcome for the kid? Can the system even do much to
| help with the child's medical condition? If not, it's
| irrational for people to take their children in for
| examination; there's no benefit and you risk being accused.
| bluGill wrote:
| Parents only know symptoms, which could be anything. Those
| same symptoms (or small variations) can lead to a very
| different diagnosis which is easily treatable.
| rossant wrote:
| He underwent surgery to remove the excess of fluid around the
| brain, and his condition progressively improved. It could
| have worsened without the operation, we'll never know. Now,
| at almost 8, he's doing great.
|
| I've seen cases where parents call the ER after a collapse of
| their child, only to see their child wake up just fine a few
| minutes later. The EMT tells them it's not necessary to bring
| their child to the hospital given the child has recovered,
| but the parents insist. At the hospital, sometimes they have
| to insist too for a CT scan to be performed. This is where
| doctors find subdural bleeding and the parents end up
| accused, the child is removed for months, etc. Yet, the child
| gets no particular medical treatment. None of this would have
| occurred if the parents hadn't insisted!
| cwmma wrote:
| Something similar happened recently in Massachusetts with a
| doctor seeing an injury the parents couldn't explain and the
| kid being taken away for a while. Injury turned out to probably
| have been done by the grandparents who never told the parents
| because the kid didn't fuss, but the kids were taken away in
| the middle of the night.
|
| https://www.nbcboston.com/investigations/massachusetts-dcf-e...
| danenania wrote:
| My first inclination here is to blame the doctor. Per the
| Hippocratic Oath, doctors need to understand the implications
| of making reports like this and only do so in cases where
| there isn't reasonable doubt or plausible explanations other
| than abuse. Separating children from parents and making
| accusations like this is extremely traumatic in itself, so
| the evidence bar needs to be very high.
|
| Even if the rules tell doctors that they need to make a
| report in a given scenario, they should not be following the
| rules when they know the bureaucracies that handle these
| reports are dysfunctional and prone to separating children
| without conclusive evidence. Imo they are responsible for
| protecting their patients from the system in these cases.
| ameister14 wrote:
| So you err on the 'some children are abused and die' side
| of things, and other people err on the 'some parents get
| separated from their children' side.
|
| I don't think the line is at doctors reporting, and I'll
| tell you why.
|
| There are many cases of MD's having patients where they
| know the whole family and can't believe that abuse would be
| going on, so they don't report things like spiral fractures
| and pattern bruising in a five year old. Those are markers
| of serious domestic violence and abuse, but since the doc
| knows the parent, and the parent has a sorta reasonable
| explanation, fine.
|
| No. The doctor reports, then the parents get investigated.
| Sorry it sucks, but the point to fix is the people
| interacting with the family at the point of investigation,
| not the report by an MD, because unfortunately the MD is
| going to lean towards not reporting until it is too late.
| danenania wrote:
| That would be fine if the investigations were fair and
| followed basic principles of jurisprudence like "innocent
| until proven guilty", but it's plain to see that kids are
| being separated based on very flimsy evidence.
|
| In my book, a doctor doesn't get to absolve themselves of
| responsibility by saying "just following orders" and that
| it's the investigative system that needs to be fixed. If
| they know the system is broken, it's both immoral and a
| deep betrayal of trust for them to report people without
| strong evidence.
|
| Almost any injury can be framed as possible evidence of
| abuse. Parents shouldn't have to be afraid that taking
| their kids to the hospital after an injury will get them
| taken away. The vast majority of injuries are _not_ from
| abuse, so a system with a low bar for evidence is going
| to end up with more false positives than cases of abuse.
| This is exacerbated by the fact that abusers, for obvious
| reasons, are often going to avoid getting medical care
| for the kids they abuse.
|
| If your reasoning were applied more broadly, we'd put
| anyone accused of a crime, or of even planning a crime,
| in prison immediately, since otherwise crimes will occur
| (with people hurt/killed) that could have been prevented.
| There's a reason the legal system doesn't work this way.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's federal, but in my state a doctor is
| required to report anything they feel is unusual. Mandated
| reporter, it's called.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There's a federal act (CAPTA) that requires states to
| adopt mandatory reporting rules, but the rules vary from
| state-to-state. Some states, simply by being in a
| particular profession you are required to report (even
| when not on the job); in other states it's specifically
| when evidence is uncovered while performing your duties;
| in some states, _all_ people are required to report.
|
| I've never encountered a state in which a medical doctor
| encountering evidence of abuse while seeing a patient is
| not required to report it, with the exception of some
| states exempting mental-health professionals told things
| in confidence (so a psychiatrist, which is also an MD,
| might not be required to report it depending on the
| state).
| cm2012 wrote:
| Not surprised it happened in France, they are much more of a
| nanny state (in good and bad ways) when it comes to parenting.
| Like the fact that paternity tests are banned unless you have a
| court order, etc.
| huytersd wrote:
| Can't you just get a paternity test online? Otherwise that's
| an insane situation, do they expect a dad to raise a kid that
| is not his?
| lmm wrote:
| > Can't you just get a paternity test online?
|
| You can, but it's a crime, much like buying banned drugs
| etc.
|
| > do they expect a dad to raise a kid that is not his?
|
| Yes.
| seszett wrote:
| > _do they expect a dad to raise a kid that is not his?_
|
| You just need a court order to do a paternity test, they're
| not banned but regulated by law.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not insane. Genetic lineage is the least important
| factor in whether or not a given kid is "yours".
| huytersd wrote:
| It's by far the most important factor. Who are you to say
| it isn't?
| hcrean wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| cm2012 wrote:
| "Slighted" is doing a lot of work in this sentence, wow.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I can certainly see the other side of this argument
| though, it feels very unfair to saddle a third party with
| the responsibility to support a child they had no part in
| making.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Do you have kids?
|
| I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first, I
| kept half-joking about getting a peace of mind paternity
| test.
|
| After actually meeting the kid and getting to know our
| love her, I couldn't think of anything more devastating
| than finding out she's not mine.
|
| Honestly wouldn't want to know, because losing my little
| girl would be worse than misallocating resources or
| whatever the Darwinian theory would be.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Oh sure, I totally understand that. I wouldn't care a bit
| about genetics in that case.
|
| Imagine a different scenario though. Imagine you are on
| the point of breaking up, or even already separated, and
| she is suddenly pregnant.
| huytersd wrote:
| You may find being willfully ignorant acceptable but
| that's really not the norm. I do have kids. If I knew
| they were not mine I would not leave them but I would
| have kids that were biologically mine. Either ways I want
| to know.
| goles wrote:
| As someone else pointed out in the thread.
|
| The question wasn't would you want to know. The question
| is does a father have a right to know if they want to.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think the importance of the "making" part greatly
| depends on how long it's been since the making happened.
| The more time that elapsed, the less important it is, and
| the more important the child's existing bond to their
| (assumed) father is. If I suddenly found out my 10 year
| old didn't happen to biologically come from me, it's not
| like I'd love her any less. What kind of monster says
| "Oh, so the kid's not 'biologically mine', I'm going to
| stop loving them!"
|
| I'd have words with mom, though, obviously...
| sneak wrote:
| > _I 'd have words with mom, though, obviously..._
|
| To what end?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Never gave it much thought because my kid's genetic
| lineage has never really been called into question.
| Obviously if something like this came up, you'd have to
| talk to your partner about a wide variety of topics
| ranging from trust to STDs. But "should I keep loving and
| raising the child" would obviously not be one of them.
| ecshafer wrote:
| If the state decides that it is better for a child, of no
| relation to you, to be taken out of foster care and you
| are now their legal guardian: you would be happy with
| this turn of events? You have a job presumably, surely
| that would be better than foster care or an orphanage.
| huytersd wrote:
| The welfare of someone else's child doesn't register very
| highly on a majority of people's radars beyond basic
| humanitarian considerations. How about government
| provided daycare and forcing the mother to work.
| sneak wrote:
| Possession is nine tenths of the law. It's not someone
| else's child if it's in your house and you need a genetic
| test to deny responsibility.
|
| This idea that bloodlines are relevant is anachronistic
| superstition. Several of my friends are not genetically
| related to their children. It's simply not relevant.
| huytersd wrote:
| Why are you trying to play off your limited anecdotal
| evidence as universal? It has been the most important
| thing since the dawn of human civilization and continues
| to be so. What if someone just dropped off a random child
| at your doorstep and tells you you're responsible for its
| upbringing now. I can understand people that want to
| adopt but that's a conscious decision they made on their
| part.
| komali2 wrote:
| > It has been the most important thing since the dawn of
| human civilization
|
| Technically this is appeal to tradition. Certainly it's
| true that our various worldly cultures are strongly
| influenced by this idea, but factually speaking... before
| paternity tests, there was literally no way to know for
| men if a child was their paternal child, especially in
| societies with very little physical attribute variance.
| Therefore , it's not really true that "it's the most
| important thing," because we've never been able to tell
| for certainty who a child's father is until very
| recently. Even with physical attributes, our knowledge of
| genetics is relatively recent in human history, so
| there's probably lots of false positives / negatives
| (with hair or eye color for example).
|
| > What if someone just dropped off a random child at your
| doorstep and tells you you're responsible for its
| upbringing now.
|
| This doesn't make sense in the context, is this a red
| herring or a strawman or similar? I believe the
| discussions is around situations that would normally
| involve a paternity test, which to me all essentially
| double checking whether a woman could have been
| impregnated by some other person than the expectant
| father.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's the same thing. If a man has sex with a woman and
| the government then drops off a foster child 9 months
| later, that's no different than being expected to raise a
| child fathered by another man with the same woman.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| When it comes to "justifiable reasons for leaving your
| partner, the person you love and trust", infidelity is
| right up there near the top. You seem to be implying that
| the victim whose trust was irrevocably shattered should
| also be saddled with the financial burden which resulted
| from the act of infidelity. If that's how you truly feel
| then I'll just leave it at, "I disagree." There's not
| enough common ground to argue upon constructively
| otherwise.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Step-fathers and step-children are well known vectors of
| abuse. The Cinderella Effect was verified to produce more
| abuse from step-relationships up to and including lethal
| beatings from step-fathers.
|
| Legally it might not be relevant for whatever structural
| reason, but the reality is that it matters a lot.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Adopting is no big deal. Being cuckolded is generally
| considered one of the biggest betrayals in the human
| experience. It's incredibly relevant to know if your
| spouse is faithful to you!
| mark_up wrote:
| It might matter to you, but it has no bearing on the
| welfare of a child or the greater good of the community.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| We can prioritize the child without forcing someone
| nearby to become the parent.
| huytersd wrote:
| [flagged]
| sneak wrote:
| You are conflating infidelity with lack of knowledge of a
| child's paternity.
|
| They are not remotely the same.
| _rm wrote:
| I think this is the most bizarre statement I've read on
| the internet this year. And this is _the internet_.
| arp242 wrote:
| reason.com has an entire long-running series of stories like
| this happening in the U.S. I've heard quite a few stories
| from the Netherlands. It probably happens in other countries
| as well.
|
| It's an issue in many Western countries, where we've
| seemingly become risk-averse to the point where it's causing
| more harm than good.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Here in Norway the child protection services have been
| found guilty[1] of being too quick to remove children from
| their parents, and not letting the parents see them.
|
| This seems to have led to the pendulum swinging too much in
| the opposite direction, where they now seemingly force
| foster kids to meet their biological parents against the
| kid's will[2]...
|
| [1]: https://rett24.no/articles/norge-felt-i-ni-nye-
| barnevernsake...
|
| [2]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/mener-fosterbarn-presses-til-
| skadel...
| trenchgun wrote:
| >parents lose custody for 2 months. Horror story.
|
| If you read the rest of the article, you will realize that this
| was the absolute happy path in that kind of situation. That's
| the real horror story: that the default path involves stuff
| like losing custody forever, incarceration, suicide, divorce
| etc.
| rossant wrote:
| Yes, after discovering hundreds of families living much worse
| situations, I consider myself as one of the lucky few. I'm
| grateful for that and this is why I can spend so much energy
| ensuring it doesn't affect too many other families in the
| future.
| cnity wrote:
| Watch the Netflix documentary Taking Care of Maya for a
| sobering and ongoing look into this.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Very often, abuse is diagnosed "by default", because no known
| alternative explanation was found (or even actively sought). This
| is extremely dangerous, as it seems to indicate that no further
| medical discovery need ever be made in the future.
|
| Well, "dangerous" for who? For a lot of people involved in "child
| abuse" - from medical professionals to child services to the
| police - a false positive carries basically no consequences: you
| report it, or follow up, or do whatever your task is, "to be
| sure", and that's it.
|
| But a false negative can have a lot more consequences, including
| losing your job, lawsuits, becoming the centre of a media circus,
| becoming the target of an investigation yourself, etc. etc.
|
| Also see: most Amber Alerts should not have been sent, and are
| just simple cases of runaways, miscommunications, or family
| drama. But the official "pushing the button" to send out an alert
| has the same incentives as above.
|
| The incentives are pretty obvious.
| hmottestad wrote:
| It would be dangerous for the children. In the most extreme
| imaginable case we could discover a preventative measure for
| the brain bleed.
|
| Infants are routinely given vitamin K and vitamin D to prevent
| bleeding and to prevent bone development issues. Imagine if
| there was something else that could be given to prevent brain
| bleeds. That would save a lot of children.
| pmarreck wrote:
| As a new parent of a son, this is horrifying.
|
| Why is the default, to accuse the caretakers with phantom
| (unfounded) certainty, absent any other good evidence?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This article reminded me of another local story about a doctor
| who provides assessment beyond the knee jerk child protection
| industrial complex -
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/child-abuse-or-med...
|
| This also reminds me a lot of the indoctrination we went through
| at the hospital when my daughter was born.
|
| Despite being a high risk pregnancy we were railroaded into a
| natural birth. After nearly 24 hours of horrific labor she spiked
| an extremely high fever and they had to do a c-section, making us
| feel like failures. They found that our daughter wouldn't have
| made it otherwise.
|
| We were castigated because my wife took medicines that entered
| her milk and were made to feel like failures for considering not
| breast feeding. She had to pump milk at five AM before she took
| any medicine to minimize the exposure to the extremely toxic
| medicine that would be present in her milk. She didn't produce
| enough milk and we were at wits end. The nurses and doctors at
| the hospital were unhelpful and treated us like abusers. When we
| went to our local pediatrician he laughed and said entire
| generations were raised on formula and to stop killing ourselves.
| It was the best advice we were ever given.
|
| Likewise my daughter couldn't sleep on her back. She wailed every
| night. I read everything I could find on SIDS and I realized the
| correlation for back sleeping was very weak - almost
| statistically irrelevant - and even then the prevalence of SIDS
| was very low. Yet I knew for 100% my daughter wasn't sleeping. I
| knew if I told anyone I would be lectured, and I worried might
| even be reported. The after nearly a week of not sleeping I
| flipped her over one night with my heart pounding. She fell
| asleep immediately. She didn't die.
|
| She's nine now and an incredible athlete and has a sharp and
| brilliant mind. None of the doomsday stuff occurred. No autism,
| no weak immune system, no weight problems, intellectual
| deficiency, or all the other warnings we were given about
| c-section, formula, or belly sleeping. Over the years I continued
| to read the research and there's basically nothing compelling
| about any of this advice, at least not at the level of stridency
| parents experience.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| 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
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| 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
| often go completely undiagnosed, as they pertain to early
| development and often improve naturally over time.
|
| The technical report by AAP the other year does an excellent
| job of presenting the current evidence in an as objective way
| as possible, I highly recommend it:
|
| https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e20220.
| ..
|
| You will note that efforts are being made to disentangle
| diagnoses from the broad SIDS label and that while SIDS cases
| are trending downwards, it's likely due to both proper
| classification and education.
|
| The point of preventative measures is to avoid the issue
| entirely. Sure, tummy sleeping might not be a problem for you
| (or maybe it was and you just got lucky!) but by generally
| recommending back sleeping, a class of issues is avoided.
|
| So all in all, I really don't see this as bullshit at all.
| Caveat that you gotta do what you gotta do, but I'd rather
| this advice persist than not. We should hope that no one ever
| has to endure the loss of a child.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| 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.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| " Let there be no misunderstanding on the point that shaking is
| an absolutely real and dramatic form of child abuse. Inflicted
| head trauma is a devastating condition and a definite cause of
| traumatic brain injuries, including intracranial hemorrhage. Many
| medical determinations of SBS/AHT are made on children who have
| effectively been victims of violent intentional trauma.
| Prevention efforts against all forms of child abuse are totally
| warranted."
|
| A lot of the comments here are missing this key statement. While
| there can be medical explanations for things that look like SBS,
| it's exceedingly rare
| laurent_du wrote:
| I missed this part. Where does the author mention that other
| medical explanations (other than SBS) are exceedingly rare
| compared to the baby having indeed been shaken?
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I said that blaming medical reasons for SBS is exceedingly
| rare. As indicated, trauma due to shaking is usually the
| case. Medical reasons can't be ruled out. That's the crux of
| the issue.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| You're assuming that medical science is capable of providing an
| explanation in every case, when the whole point of this article
| is to say that these symptoms are insufficient to diagnose SBS.
| The author is saying if we have no alternative medical
| explanations, then we have no medical explanation at all. In
| order to diagnose SBS, the author suggests that you need
| additional evidence suggesting trauma such as bruising, broken
| bones, etc. Indeed, that seems to be what the SBS lobby is now
| saying as well, they just haven't communicated that to front-
| line providers.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| "You're assuming that medical science is capable of providing
| an explanation in every case, when the whole point of this
| article is to say that these symptoms are insufficient to
| diagnose SBS"
|
| I do not disagree with you. I just caution as does the author
| that you can't rule out criminality either.
| rossant wrote:
| > In order to diagnose SBS, the author suggests that you need
| additional evidence suggesting trauma such as bruising,
| broken bones, etc. Indeed, that seems to be what the SBS
| lobby is now saying as well, they just haven't communicated
| that to front-line providers.
|
| That's exactly it.
| DrThunder wrote:
| You must have skimmed the article because it said over and over
| that it was basically impossible to definitively identify that
| a baby was shaken. It's a diagnosis they use when they're not
| sure.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It does not say that.
| murphyslab wrote:
| It's interesting the instance cited about authors of a scientific
| paper being compelled to remove a reference because a peer
| reviewer alleged that the researcher behind it is "a lousy and
| dishonest researcher". What's more interesting is that PLOS ONE
| repeated the allegation. I am curious whether there is a case for
| defamation for the publication of such an allegation.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/peerReview?id=10.1...
|
| I've certainly had peer reviewers trying to get me to cite their
| own papers in my articles, however I've never seen an instance
| where a peer reviewer alleged that an article I've cited was by
| someone disreputable.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I've certainly had peer reviewers trying to get me to cite
| their own papers in my articles, however I've never seen an
| instance where a peer reviewer alleged that an article I've
| cited was by someone disreputable.
|
| I have recommended some citations to be removed as a reviewer.
| It's not useful to keep citing discredited articles that should
| have been retracted. Keeping them in new articles just makes
| them more likely to be read uncritically and further propagate
| bullshit.
|
| OTOH, the argument is "the article is rubbish", not some kind
| of as hominem attack because I don't like the main author.
| murphyslab wrote:
| I can see encouraging authors to remove "zombie citations",
| but that should be rare nowadays, as many bibliographic
| databases will automatically flag retracted articles now,
| thanks to integration with the Retraction Watch database.
| kergonath wrote:
| Hopefully, yes. But there are a lot of articles that should
| be retracted, but that won't be because of editorial
| policies or the fact that nobody actually cares.
| didibus wrote:
| As a parent, I can only imagine one thing worst than someone
| causing such head injury to my child, it is for me to be falsely
| convicted of such abuse and losing access to my own child.
| qez2 wrote:
| [dead]
| RektBoy wrote:
| "Shake it baby"
| zapdrive wrote:
| Imagine your child taken away from you just on the basis of some
| assumptions. This makes my blood boil. I have never had murderous
| thoughts even when I have been wronged really bad. I just forget
| and move on with life. But I don't think I can do that if my
| child is taken from me for something I didn't do. I'll definitely
| go postal. Land of "Freedom".
| slackfan wrote:
| Not just a US thing. Europe is even more prevalent.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _But in practice, extremely few medical conditions are checked
| for and "excluded" before concluding a diagnosis ... - the great
| majority are not checked for at all. Very often, ... is diagnosed
| "by default", because no known alternative explanation was found
| (or even actively sought)._ "
|
| From anecdotes I hear, that is one of the major problems with the
| medical system in a nutshell.
| noobermin wrote:
| In the anglosphere (or may be just america) "think of the
| children" has lead to a lot of these sorts of issues. Child abuse
| is the worst thing anyone could imagine, and so, how could anyone
| over-react? How can any action be enough? May be some figures or
| entities take advantage of this, but there is some sincere
| motivation in these drives too. And now, we have issues like this
| article, children not being allowed unattended in most public
| places, children unallowed to walk on their own without adult
| supervision, and it goes on and on.
|
| The thing is there is no needed ill intent, all parents can be
| sincere, and yet create a society and culture that stunts their
| very childrens' growth and lives. In the article, as the author
| said, how many thousands of parents have been separated from
| their child, and the infant, now parent-less, will be shuffled
| from foster home to foster home, all in the name of ending abuse
| based on filmsy evidence and poor science? It's depressing.
|
| The very desire to protect and love leads to hurting those we
| intend to help.
| [deleted]
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| This was a sensational news trope on MSM nightly news and news
| magazines in the 90's in the US.
| kr0bat wrote:
| I came to realize that there was a long-standing scientific
| controversy in the field, and I felt that I had no choice but to
| get to the bottom of things myself. Although I am not a medical
| doctor, I hold a PhD in neuroscience and am familiar with
| critically reading scientific literature. I decided that I would
| invest as much time as necessary to learn everything I possibly
| could on the subject. At that point, there was nothing in my life
| more important than finding out what had really happened to my
| son.
|
| This is why higher education (and academic mettle) is amazing
| drt5b7j wrote:
| [flagged]
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I'm not dismissive of education. I learn on the job. I learn
| in my free time. I learn to further my career. I learn to
| help myself out. I learn for fun.
|
| What I resent is the absurd idea that going to a brick and
| mortar institutions for 4, 6, maybe 10 years, following a
| track the teacher and administration considered best, with
| the vast majority of those being educated getting an outdated
| curriculum, is an effective means of learning. This entire
| attitude is portrayed as pro-education but it's really just
| pro-institution. It's only an effective means of learning
| insofar that the credential you get at the end can open doors
| to opportunities to learn, a point I will readily concede.
|
| I also have done amateur medical research in my spare time
| and literally printed out some papers and taken them to my
| doctor and said "let's do this". This ended up being very
| successful and very productive. It's not what the OP did is
| something people who did fancy book lernin' through a SCHOOL
| can do only after years of toil. You can just pick up the
| skills you need as you go and get reasonable results.
| dtdynasty wrote:
| I think you underestimate the lack of self directed
| learning ability people have before going to a higher
| education institutions. I know I would have failed at solo
| learning without going to college before hand.
|
| Structured education can definitely help a majority of
| students who need to get to a point where self directed
| learning is effective. I have my qualms with higher
| education but its existence itself is not one of them.
| dartos wrote:
| And that's solid advice for starting a tech company. (This is
| a y combinator website)
| dartos wrote:
| I think that speaks more towards the author than higher
| education.
|
| Definitely a tangent, but attributing that attitude to higher
| education is like someone attributing a doctor saving their
| life to an act of god. Like yeah if you squint I guess that's
| true.
|
| My experience with higher education has been that of
| administrators taking advantage of my naivety for profit,
| elitism towards those not in academia, and dismissal of any
| ideas that wouldn't directly result in a grant or a good
| headline.
|
| I wouldn't really say that the author's "mettle" is a result of
| the same environment.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah I dunno... I mean, a lot of these things are true, and
| they all are big problems, but also, in my experience,
| academics (at least in the sciences) do actually know how to
| read and understand research, which is an extremely difficult
| and useful skill.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Isn't that just what PhD do? I meant going through piles of
| papers - most of them bring more new questions than answers
| - and stay sane
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep. That's exactly what I'm saying. This is like the
| primary skill that people learn to get a PhD. It's true
| that people can learn it without getting a PhD, but
| hardly anyone does, because it kind of sucks and if
| you're doing it you may as well do it with the guidance
| of an advisor and get a credential at the end.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| Yeah, I think "mettle" here is like a sword and shield and
| the ability to use them (read and understand scientific
| literature, and able to do so, self-directed, for _years_
| ).
|
| But whether a person _does_ use them, and for what, is
| entirely due to the person themselves.
| cdogl wrote:
| Many academics have these skills; whether the higher
| education system is effective at teaching them and delivers
| an experience worth the significant cost to students (or
| here in Australia, also the publics).
| sanderjd wrote:
| I would argue that it's clearly _the most_ effective
| system at training people to do this. It 's fine to
| imagine (and try to create) alternative systems that
| would work better. But there isn't one now.
|
| Constructive criticism is good. But what I mostly see
| (and often do myself) is just grousing.
| dartos wrote:
| Yeah you're not wrong at all. I'm not saying "down with
| academia" or anything like that.
|
| Just that attributing the work and work ethic of an
| individual to the institution of academia is weird and
| fosters and propagates elitism.
| dartos wrote:
| That's okay, I know.
|
| Anyone with the wherewithal can learn to "read and
| understand research" it's not a magical power bestowed upon
| the few who receive recognition from some long standing
| bloated institution.
|
| Attributing the drive and work of an individual to such an
| institution is weird and elitist.
|
| I should note that if said institution paid for, assembled
| the team, and provided resources, then that institution
| obviously deserves credit.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think this is a misunderstanding of how stuff works. I
| agree that anyone (or at least a large percentage of
| people) can learn to do it and it isn't a magical power.
|
| But it's far more common for academics to be able to do
| it because _that 's what academics learn to do_. It's a
| large focus of the training.
|
| It isn't elitist to say "car mechanics are good at
| reading and acting on the information in car engine
| manuals", that's just what car mechanics are trained to
| do and get consistent practice at doing.
| dartos wrote:
| I don't think there's any misunderstanding. Your comment
| seems in line with what I said and what I believe.
|
| One can teach themselves how to be a mechanic and pass
| the ASE. Most go through some course to learn the trade,
| of course. It's more structured that way and many find it
| easier.
|
| I've never had my auto repair shop attribute their
| mechanic's skill to where they learned to be a mechanic.
| I never turned down a mechanic bc they didn't go to the
| brown or Harvard of car repair.
|
| On the other hand I'm an expert in my field, but I've
| been turned down from at least 1 job specifically because
| I didn't graduate from Brown university. (It was a
| backend job for the now-defunct Delivery Dudes)
|
| OP attributed the mettle of the author to higher
| education and academia, which I think is weird and
| elitist.
|
| Attributing success or ability to an institution fosters
| that kind of weird elitism.
| autoexec wrote:
| Lots of other parents driven to look for answers about what
| happened to their child, but being far less educated on how
| to read and understand academic papers, ended up "doing their
| own research" and became antivaxxers. There's a lot to be
| said for having an education that enables you to evaluate
| scientific literature effectively.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The kind of people who get PhDs can also figure out how to
| read academic papers on their own. There's a lot of
| correlation/causation mix up on this thread.
|
| For instance, people who get accepted into Harvard but
| don't attend have the exact same life outcomes to those who
| get accepted and do attend. The same is now true for
| college in general once you account for opportunity costs.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I was in a private discussion group during the pandemic
| that "did their own research"
|
| First off, this was genuinely valuable during the first few
| months. Gigantic medical institutions were moving at a
| glacial pace and were making proclamations literally months
| behind the state of the research. In order to conserve
| masks, propaganda was put out that masks were only
| effective if you were a medical professional, and the most
| common way I saw this rationalised was that the general
| public was simply too stupid to wear a mask in a sanitary
| way. So I proceeded to wear a mask in a sanitary way. Then
| after a few months mask stocks started to pile up so
| propagandists THEN pronounced that more science was
| conducted and masks were actually effective for everybody!
|
| That positive outcome aside, what other people saw was that
| the younger people got, the lower the risks of COVID, and
| the higher the risks of getting vaccinated. In fact, it
| seemed from the numbers (This is for the earlier strains of
| COVID), that for certain populations (young people who
| lived like hermits, in other words, hacker news readers) it
| could be on a selfish individual basis, be irrational to
| get the COVID vaccine. The risk from myocarditis could
| actually outweigh the risk of COVID itself. It was however,
| always in the collective interest for as many people to get
| vaccinated as possible, to reduce the transmission of
| COVID, and reduce the consequent strain on medical
| resources and the direct/indirect deaths this caused.
| Public health institutions did not get into this nuance,
| because it wasn't in the collective interest, so they just
| told everybody the vaccine was good for you. I proceeded to
| get vaccinated, and the main person I held discussions with
| did not, after both drawing the exact same scientific
| conclusion. Not every anti-vaccer was stupid, some of them
| were just massive civil libertarians.
|
| What I saw from people who DIDN'T do their own research is
| that they were UNIFORMLY misinformed because they tended to
| either believe institutions who would lie to them whenever
| it served their purposes (2 weeks to flatten the curve!),
| or believed whatever podcaster told them about Ivermectin.
| linuxftw wrote:
| We know now that the CDC and the manufacturers (and the
| media) lied about efficacy regarding preventing
| transmission/infection. In fact, the trials didn't even
| attempt to measure transmission or infection, and were
| not ever authorized for such. The only thing they were
| authorized for was reducing the severity.
|
| Do not perpetuate the myth that the vaccines slowed the
| spread.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| No, I think I will stand by my position that the vaccines
| did in fact slow the spread, especially early on. I think
| there is LOTS of evidence about the vaccines effects on
| transmission which points to them being effective.
|
| Also think back to before we had good evidence on
| transmissibility/infection. Myocarditis hit the young,
| who were the last to be vaccinated, and consequently
| among the last to be researched. So the evidence of the
| vaccinations effects on transmissibility/infection led
| the evidence about myocarditis. Before either of those
| bits of evidence came out, the vaccines were nevertheless
| VERY effective at reducing hospitalisations from COVID-19
| caused by early strains in those initial trials. I've
| also only really heard of the Pfizer trial's being
| severely criticised after the fact.
|
| So there was good cause to get vaccinated the entire
| time, although the value of vaccination kept dropping as
| new strains kept cropping up which were seemingly less
| impaired by vaccination, and after omicron I saw a huge
| amount of people start to skip vaccination.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > I think there is LOTS of evidence about the vaccines
| effects on transmission which points to them being
| effective.
|
| Can you point to some canonical sources on this?
| Preferably things that were published in the last year or
| so.
|
| My understanding is that effects on infection and
| transmission were overstated and very short lived anyway.
| Didn't everybody get covid eventually, multiple times
| even?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Everyone getting covid and slowing transmission aren't
| incompatible. In the no lockdown, no vaccine world,
| everyone gets covid in ~100 days. With vaccines that
| period is a lot longer (roughly a year?) even though
| omicron has roughly twice as high a transmission rate.
| The simplest proof that vaccines have an effect on
| transmission is the number of infected people by vaccine
| status. There have been dozens of studies of this (see
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-
| effectiven...) but this really is one where you can just
| eyeball the effects
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/28/us/covid-
| brea....
| bluGill wrote:
| While is was not measured directly, we can still look at
| other data. People who don't get COVID obviously cannot
| spread it, and so we know vaccines were effective to slow
| the spread. They were not good enough to stop it, but
| they did slow it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You can go ahead and read the trials yourself. They very
| much found that the vaccines were _excellent_ at
| preventing Covid-19 entirely (they did not measure if
| they also prevented SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic infection).
|
| It just turns out that they had far too little data and
| that in real-world conditions they weren't anywhere near
| the 90+% claimed effectiveness.
|
| Even so, the latest population-level research still
| suggests that the vaccines were 50-60% effective at
| preventing Covid-19 entirely, at least for some months.
| linuxftw wrote:
| First, they still haven't released all the trial data.
| Second, the data the FDA released on their own website
| for the Pfizer trials proved they didn't even test all of
| the participants in the trial for COVID, nor did they
| test all the 'suspected but unverified' cases of COVID.
|
| There simply is no data to prove they ever prevented
| transmission. The trials were the best place to prove
| that, and they DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TRY.
| [deleted]
| rossant wrote:
| Yes, I met other parents with higher education/a scientific
| background (researchers, engineers...) and living the same
| situation with their child. They naturally question the
| assertions by healthcare professionals, they make their own
| research, they ask highly precise and relevant questions to
| such a point that most doctors are simply unable to answer...
|
| I remember that as I was questioning the diagnosis at the
| hospital and trying to make sure there wasn't another medical
| explanation, I was basically threatened by doctors who told me,
| "Just stop asking questions and accuse your nanny as everyone
| else, or you'll be the one in trouble". Apparently, it was very
| unusual for a parent to refrain from accusing the nanny when
| she was the suspect number 1!
|
| I actually know one case where the parents (with a high
| education) were "too fast" in exonerating their nanny and tried
| to find a second medical opinion on their own to find out why
| their child was sick. Well, the judicial system didn't like it
| and they ended up being accused themselves. Their child was
| taken away for 4 months. The trauma was so intense that their
| family didn't survive and they eventually divorced (that's
| unfortunately the fate of many, if not most families).
| sneak wrote:
| > _I couldn't live with this uncertainty any longer. But first, I
| had to get my son back. As a precautionary measure, the hospital
| followed mandatory reporting statutes and my wife and I
| temporarily lost custody of David. Thanks to our incredibly
| effective defense lawyer, we were cleared of all charges within
| two months, during which we stayed at the hospital 24 /7 with
| David until we sorted out the legal procedures. I would discover
| much later that we actually had been lucky to be allowed to do
| this, as most parents are abruptly separated from their babies
| for months after reporting takes place._
|
| This sounds very much like presumed guilt rather than presumed
| innocence.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Is the criminal justice system in France based on a presumption
| of innonce?
| rossant wrote:
| Yes, as others have said. However, this is a legitimate
| question, because in these specific cases, the burden of
| proof tends to be on the side of the defendant who needs to
| prove they didn't harm their child. That's obviously
| impossible, and probably unconstitutional.
|
| When medical experts claim they're 100% confident that _this_
| child was violently shaken at _this specific time_ , and that
| you were the only person with the child at that time, how can
| you defend yourself when you haven't done anything? There's
| nothing you could ever do to convince courts that your word
| has more value than the confidence of highly reputable
| experts with decades of experience.
|
| This is an instance where the prosecution's case relies on
| the confidence in medical authorities, and where it is
| extremely hard to challenge it as the subject is so difficult
| on a scientific and technical level. In the US and other
| adversarial jurisdictions, you see an incredible level of
| technicality during oral debates, with extensive and long-
| running discussions around extremely obscure points related
| to the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the infant
| nervous system in highly specific pathological situations,
| where infants frequently suffer from multiple rare medical
| conditions or risk factors. Few people in the world have the
| required expertise, and even fewer accept to testify in
| courts! There's also an obvious financial imbalance between
| the State and the defendant.
|
| In inquisitorial jurisdictions like France, this is even
| worse as there's basically no system in place to challenge
| the views of the State's experts.
|
| So, yes, litigating these cases is extraordinarily
| challenging because the only way to prove the defendant's
| innocence is to challenge the opinion of overly assertive
| medical experts by digging into highly difficult (and
| multidisciplinary) science.
| armada651 wrote:
| Is that a serious question? Yes, the French justice system is
| based on a presumption of innocence, just like any other
| functioning democratic nation. It is a basic human right
| under the UN charter after all.
| mlindner wrote:
| You say that, but this doesn't seem like presumption of
| innocence. A country with a presumption of innocence
| doesn't take your child away from you without trial.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A presumption of innocence doesn't mean that a trial is
| needed before (what are supposed to be) basic safety
| measures.
|
| Judges can issue preliminary injunctions before trial in
| all places in the world. A justice system that can't take
| any coercive action until the end of a trial would simply
| not function.
|
| In particular though, cases like this aren't even related
| to the presumption of innocence. The state believes that
| the child has suffered harm, so a judge takes them in
| protective custody. Who is harming the child remains to
| be determined, but taking the child into custody is
| supposed to protect the child immediately.
|
| Of course, this can be, like in this case, wrongly
| applied to disastrous effects. But it has also saved many
| children from abusive parents, where leaving them without
| state protection for years while the trial advances would
| have scarred them permanently or killed them.
| Muromec wrote:
| Pre-trial detention is a thing pretty much everywhere
| despite literally locking innocent people up before a
| trial.
| robbie-c wrote:
| Tough to see how else you would do it - a hypothetical
| murderer in broad daylight with a ton of reliable
| witnesses and video evidence would still have to wait for
| a trial, I don't think anyone would seriously say that
| this hypothetical person should be free until the trial
| happens.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I don't think so either
| https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-09-21/met-police-
| office...
| ascorbic wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that almost all countries have a
| different standard of proof for taking a child away than
| for criminal trial, and none will wait for the outcome of
| a trial to do this.
| mlindner wrote:
| I don't deny that many other countries may also be
| missing elements of the presumption of innocence.
| kergonath wrote:
| There are complications when immediate danger needs to be
| avoided. E.g., the system prefers to take away children
| preventively in serious cases rather than leaving them in a
| dangerous environment. Which is sometimes justified, and
| sometimes not. The idea in this case is that it is easier to
| correct a mistake by restoring custody than by reviving a
| dead child.
|
| A bit like temporary restraining orders pending trial in the
| US.
| jurgenaut23 wrote:
| Thank you so much for investigating this matter so thoroughly and
| fighting for justice so eagerly. As the father of a 4-month-old
| baby, I couldn't imagine anything more devastating than having
| him taken away by the authorities for something neither my wife
| nor I have done. I can only imagine the despair of the families
| to whom this happens, let alone the impact on the poor kids
| themselves.
| concordDance wrote:
| [flagged]
| jacquesm wrote:
| You've _got_ to be kidding. This takes victim blaming to a
| whole new level.
| concordDance wrote:
| Uh, why would I be kidding and how on earth is that victim
| blaming?
|
| There's a range of reasons people don't tend to make the full
| case for the opposite of the thing they're passionate about.
| Those who can actually do so are vanishingly rare.
| praash wrote:
| This is a valid point! People might feel they must put 100%
| on arguing for their case when fighting a consensus,
| because everyone else is already doing the opposite.
|
| Steel-manning the opposing perspective could yield
| _stronger_ insight in favor of their passion. This would
| convince people to change their minds more effectively,
| because most are obsessed in the case of "true SBS" with
| physical abuse.
|
| I think your original comment just had a ring of "he's
| selling a book, don't trust his intentions"
| juanani wrote:
| [dead]
| stevev wrote:
| There are additional factors to take into account beyond simply
| labeling it as a rare condition. This includes the food or baby
| formula itself and the quality of water used. Given the frequency
| of formula recalls, there's a potential risk of obtaining a
| defective batch that could harm the baby.
| mlindner wrote:
| > As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory
| reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody of
| David.
|
| Are people absolutely nuts? Is this just a thing in France or is
| this elsewhere in Europe or even the US? You're actively
| encouraging people to not bring their children to the ER by doing
| this crazy nonsense.
| switch007 wrote:
| Definitely a UK thing too. If you take your kid to A&E you can
| guarantee every person who interacts with you is required to be
| on the lookout for abuse. You get probing questions by the
| doctors as veiled accusations and you may get protection
| services knocking on your door the next day.
| rossant wrote:
| This is a thing in most Western countries! _Especially_ in the
| US. It dates back to the 1960s [1].
|
| Most parents don't realize that anytime they interact with a
| medical doctor (or another professional), they interact with
| someone who was trained to detect "signs of abuse", which
| basically can be anything out of the ordinary. They are
| required by law to report any suspicion of abuse, and they can
| be prosecuted if they fail to do so. The incentives are pretty
| clear. Unfortunately, while this obviously protects some
| children, there are adverse effects such as an enormous waste
| of human and financial resources to unsubstantiated reports
| [2].
|
| To quote Wikipedia (this is more generally about hotline calls
| but this also affects healthcare professionals):
|
| "There are approximately 3.6 million calls each year nationwide
| (..) affecting on average 1 out of 10 U.S. families with
| children under the age of 18 each year (there are 32.2 million
| such families). (...) Of those substantiated, over half are
| minor situations and many are situations where the worker
| thinks something may happen in the future.
|
| Each year, approximately 85% of hotline calls either do not
| warrant investigation or are not substantiated. Approximately
| 78% of all investigations are unsubstantiated and approximately
| 22% are substantiated, with around 9% where "alternative
| responses" are offered in some states, which have a focus on
| working with the family to address issues rather than
| confirming maltreatment."
|
| On this topic, I highly recommend "Take Care of Maya" on
| Netflix.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_reporting_in_the_Uni...
|
| [2]
| https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/50/1/Articles/50-1_...
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...
| guynamedloren wrote:
| 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 quickly nosedive into
| junk science and contrarianism, despite best intentions, but when
| it's done well, it's really something.
|
| Probably a faux pas here these days, but reminds me of Elon
| Musk's First Principles.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| 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.
| hackernewds wrote:
| > . As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory
| reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody of
| David. Thanks to our incredibly effective defense lawyer, we were
| cleared of all charges within two months, during which we stayed
| at the hospital 24/7 with David until we sorted out the legal
| procedures.
|
| Woah
| boxed wrote:
| Here in Sweden I had to watch a video warning against baby
| shaking when my wife was pregnant with my first child. After
| seeing this horrible video, I waited a few hours to tell my wife
| that this entire thing was total bunk, and we've known it's been
| bunk for many years.
|
| Here in Sweden this child abduction idiocy is upheld by three
| doctors who all refer to each other as the experts proving baby
| shaking is real. It's a disgrace.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I've been made to watch a similar video here in The
| Netherlands. It's not bunk though. Violently shaking a baby
| will lead to trauma which can cause death. What this book is
| about is that there are _other_ causes that can lead to the
| same symptoms. The video is right. Shaking a baby leads to AHT.
| But the reverse isn 't. AHT does not mean that the baby has
| been shaken. There are many other causes for AHT.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Didn't the article state that is actually unlikely it leads
| to AHT?
| eru wrote:
| I think the article says that shaking a baby will give you
| lots of different symptoms, including bruises etc. And you
| can't really get AHT from shaking without also getting
| bruises etc.
|
| That means if you see 'AHT' without bruises (etc) it was
| probably not actual shaking.
| rossant wrote:
| Yeah, it's hard to say for sure what kind of injuries
| you'll get from violent shaking, as we obviously can't
| reproduce it on actual babies, and there are so few well-
| described cases. Studies have been made on animal models,
| showing a constellation of traumatic injuries, but no
| clear, obvious, and reproducible pattern so far.
| Strikingly, the isolated "triad" of subdural and retinal
| hemorrhage with brain edema hasn't really been reproduced
| in _any_ animal model so far [1].
|
| Anyway, we don't need this level of scientific detail and
| knowledge to say that no one should ever shake a baby.
| All brutal gestures are obviously harmful and dangerous.
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-022-
| 05577-6
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This is timely as the life of Robert Roberson is currently being
| decided based on this syndrome:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37632122
|
| https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/09/15/texas-shaken-b...
| dang wrote:
| Yes and the current submission is a result of this subthreaed
| from there:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37635094
| [deleted]
| suckitsam wrote:
| From a related article on the case [1]:
|
| > Evans said the syndrome remains a fair medical diagnosis and
| also notes in the report that SBS was not the sole cause of
| child's death.
|
| There ought to be a law where lawyers deal with legal
| interpretations and advice and medical doctors deal with
| medical interpretation and advice.
|
| In a sane world, she'd be taken off the bench until she
| completes some remedial legal coursework and several dozen
| hours of medical talks from this century. [1]
| https://www.cbs19.tv/article/news/local/judge-denies-
| recommending-east-texas-death-row-inmates-appeal-exoneration-
| new-trial/501-39bfdd8e-b687-4065-9b34-25b60c320e6c
| rapatel0 wrote:
| 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.
|
| - lawyers are the incentivized by our adversarial legal system to
| adopt aggressively hyperbolic interpretations of the science to
| sue people and extract money.
|
| - medical associations then tweak policies to protect against
| malpractice
|
| Run this loop enough times and lots of noise gets amplified.
|
| My hope is the AI+sensors ushers in the era of truely
| personalized medicine.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| eru wrote:
| > - 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.
| frotaur wrote:
| No I think the point that was being made is that the "average
| person" idea is not that great if you have huge variance. If
| I have a uniform distribution from 0 to 1, average is '0.5',
| but its just as likely to get 0. or 1.
| eru wrote:
| Yes, I know.
|
| My point goes beyond that one: yes, variance is a problem.
| But _even_ _just_ getting good averages, for all their
| faults, requires a bigger n than many studies have.
| Especially observational studies.
| hmottestad wrote:
| The average family with 2.3 children :D
| rapatel0 wrote:
| 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.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Your narrative reverses the roles a bit. The lawyers appear as
| the heroes in this particular story and the villains are all
| associated with the hospital -- either in the form of people or
| bureaucratic red tape, depending on how generous you want to be
| in your analysis.
|
| > The doctors at the hospital were absolutely, unconditionally
| 100% certain that no other cause than violent shaking could
| ever explain blood around the brain and at the back of the
| eyes.
|
| > As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory
| reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody
| of David.
|
| > 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.
|
| > Thanks to our incredibly effective defense lawyer, we were
| cleared of all charges within two months, during which we
| stayed at the hospital 24/7 with David until we sorted out the
| legal procedures.
|
| > Every case requires years of intense, dedicated efforts by an
| entire team of specialized lawyers and medical experts, but
| there are tens of thousands of cases and few experts willing to
| defend them.
|
| Hospitals are definitely the weak link in this system. Just
| looking at the way the story is laid out, the solution is more
| lawyers and fewer, less expansive hospitals.
| rossant wrote:
| I'm starting to see AI studies on the medical detection of
| child abuse, which unfortunately reproduce the same biases as
| the low-quality clinical data they are based on. An AI that
| would detect subdural and retinal hemorrhage without external
| signs of trauma with 99% accuracy would detect "child abuse
| with 99% accuracy" and would impress law enforcement and
| courts. However, it wouldn't be more reliable than an expert
| witness confidently asserting that these signs are almost
| always due to child abuse.
| hmottestad wrote:
| Reminds me of the bias towards long sleeves and stethoscopes
| for detecting doctors in photos.
| idoubtit wrote:
| Basically, you want to replace statistics ("large enough
| samples will average out variation") with AI. I'm afraid that's
| cargo cult instead of science.
|
| AI can lie. It means a "truely personalized medicine" would
| sometimes poison its patients. See for instance Donald Knuth
| experiment with Chat GPT, starting with "Answer #3 is fouled up
| beautifully!" with some totally wrong AI answers https://www-
| cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt
|
| Of course medical science could make a better use of
| statistics, get help from AI, and discern more profiles (e.g.
| one US adult out of two is obese, and it's often unclear how to
| adjust medication to person mass). But that's a long process,
| with no obvious path, and much distinct from the magic "AI will
| solve it all".
| xpe wrote:
| (I'll bring a conciliatory bias to this conversation. Under
| what interpretations might the ^ and ^^ comments be saying
| mostly the same thing?)
|
| >> My hope is the AI+sensors ushers in the era of truely
| personalized medicine.
|
| > AI can lie.
|
| The first hope is compatible with the second fact. It is
| possible that carefully _designed_ AI systems (that have
| different architectures than 'vanilla' LLMs) can serve a
| useful purpose here.
|
| There is a lot of interesting conversation to be had in 'the
| conciliatory zone', leaving plenty of opportunities to
| disagree when it is warranted.
|
| > Basically, you want to replace statistics ("large enough
| samples will average out variation") with AI. I'm afraid
| that's cargo cult instead of science.
|
| There is a whole lot of _assuming_ going on here, followed by
| a mischaracterization. This is not the paragon of curious
| conversation.
|
| I don't expect perfection, but I still think we should try. I
| don't mean to pick on any one person; I do this sometimes as
| well. I'm just pointing it out because, well, it is right
| here, right now.
|
| Think about the impact on the system. Seeing the anti-pattern
| above too often can drive people away. I think it does. Who
| remains? People who somehow aren't bothered by it?
| Downselecting in this way is self-defeating.
|
| I'm probably just as frustrated as anyone here (if not more)
| regarding (i) the state of medicine, (ii) perceptions of what
| current AI technology can do, and (iii) many other serious
| problems. But we shouldn't not let this frustration bleed
| into our personal interactions.
|
| It is both a waste of our time and (worse) damaging to the
| community ethos when we take an unnecessarily pessimistic
| view of _each other_. Some online fora are 'good enough'
| (though flawed) to help us connect and build bridges as
| _people_. It doesn't help when we fall into the all-too-
| common pattern of sniping without asking questions first and
| clarifying meaning.
|
| Again, nothing personal. This is more of a rant and request.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| > Basically, you want to replace statistics ("large enough
| samples will average out variation") with AI
|
| No. This is misunderstanding due to my lack of clarity.
| Apologizes.
|
| The biggest problems with Medical data is that 1) incredibly
| small scale data is collected to make assertions, 2) the data
| is horrendously de-normalized
|
| In Radiology, a common validation approach is have
| radiologists review cases on the order of 250 studies to make
| assessments about a radiology product. This is considered the
| gold standard for FDA. Look into it more, vaccines,
| treatments. The sample sizes are fucking tiny.
|
| The statistical assertion is that these relatively small
| samples capture the variation sufficiently to demonstrate
| efficacy across devices, treatments. These are then
| extrapolated to the US and wider populations. Do you believe
| that this is rigorously true?
|
| The rationale underpinning this is simply practicality. You
| cannot get thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of
| patients/doctors/etc to get a strong signal and confidence.
| For drugs, it's super hard, but for devices and software
| interventions, it way easier to get data.
|
| That brings us to the second big problem: the data structure
| is completely highly varied and denormalized.
|
| 1) From a pure structure point of view, it's basically free
| text fields that doctors sporadically fill.
|
| 2) From a underlying truth point of view, each hospital
| across the world has different protocols for care delivery. A
| histopathological FNA procedure might have a completely
| different meaning in CA, NY, or EU. This might simply be
| because of workflow, timeline, or just people using the words
| wrong.
|
| What I mean with AI+Sensors:
|
| AI doesn't need to solve the problem of intuition around
| medical problems. The biggest impact will likely come from
| the relatively mundane task of simply structuring and
| normalizing the data. Sensors simply help to generate more
| data
|
| To be more concrete, you don't want (and shouldn't trust)
| this:
|
| Prompt: "Please diagnose this person"
|
| You want this:
|
| Prompt: "Here is 100 TB of data from 100 different hospitals
| each with different workflows and patients for
| histopathology. For each patient, synthesize a CSV with the
| following schema "AnonPatientID, AnonCaseID, Pathology
| Result, Pathology stage, Incidenctal findings, ..."
|
| Then I can do the analysis myself.
|
| Hope this makes more sense.
|
| (I work in healthtech and med device and I promise you:
| Demoralization at the state of medicine is a rite of passage
| after which you can begin to address practical problems)
| Dove wrote:
| > 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
| that if I review the literature, this is what I'll find. The most
| flabberghasting case was one in which I was able to determine the
| standard of care the doctors insisted on was in flat
| contradiction to the established science _in the course of an
| afternoon_. As a mathematician by training, I am used to checking
| the reasoning behind everything I believe for myself. I can
| understand not having taken months and months to delve into a
| deeply technical topic, but when the state of affairs can be
| determined in an afternoon? I cannot fathom spending a career
| giving people advice and never having looked that far.
|
| My favorite example of obvious, silly unscientific behavior is
| the basic set of practices and beliefs surrounding blood
| pressure. Blood pressure varies a lot, second to second, minute
| to minute, hour to hour, and day to day, with an astonishing
| range, for a very long list of reasons both benign and
| concerning. It is an obvious fact, well known and easy to
| establish by anyone with a measuring device and a little
| statistical curiosity. The literature, the instruction books
| shipped with measuring devices, the procedures followed by
| doctors and nurses, the procedures they say they _should_ be
| following, bear all the hallmarks of the behavior of the
| statistically unsophisticated seeking patterns and meaning in
| randomness. But my very favorite behavior is the sheer cognitive
| dissonance. I have had nurses take my blood pressure while
| varying the circumstance - sitting, lying, this arm, that arm -
| until they got the answer they wanted, reported it to a doctor,
| who compared it to a chart with great authority and made a claim
| about my health over a span of months and years. I have had a
| five minute conversation with a doctor about the statistical
| variation of the number and the fact that best practices involve
| taking many measurements and he opined that it wasn 't really
| valid unless you measured it over twenty four hours... and then
| said, "anyway..." and proceeded in the next sentence to diagnose
| me and argue strenuously for a prescription based on a single
| measurement and no context.
|
| One of the things I find cynically, darkly entertaining is how
| often the standard advice is, not just random, not just useless,
| but _exactly wrong_. The diet they insist on to manage gallstones
| is known to cause gallstones. The treatment traditionally
| insisted on for diabetes is known to kill you faster the more
| exactly you comply. The saline typically used in hospitals,
| compared to an electrolyte balanced solution, is known to kill
| patients. _They institutionally get saline wrong!_
|
| The absolute theatrics and bureaucracy required historically to
| institute handwashing in hospitals indicates a cultural problem,
| and the current state of affairs suggests to me that it remains.
| I am not talking about advancing scientific knowledge here - I am
| talking about accounting for things that are well known and can
| be checked with little effort so long as one is not intimidated
| by basic science. The prospect of professional mathematicians
| behaving this way is laughable. Everyone knows the discredited
| results and no one would dream of using them. The prospect of
| cybersecurity professionals taking years to apply a patch after a
| security flaw is discovered beggars belief. Yet here are the
| doctors, insisting with great pomp and authority on easily
| checkable wrong things, and they have apparently been doing so in
| many domains, for a very long time. I know there is value in
| medical advice, and in many situations I seek it, but it is
| enough to make one want to throw in the towel and consult the
| aromatherapists and their healing crystals - at least they won't
| insist on something destructive!
|
| The words "scientific medicine" clearly do not mean what I would
| think they should mean.
| Dove wrote:
| 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.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| > The prospect of cybersecurity professionals taking years to
| apply a patch after a security flaw is discovered beggars
| belief.
|
| Not just years, but generations in some cases.
| ls612 wrote:
| [flagged]
| CodeAndCuffs wrote:
| Are you asserting that the caution against shaking babies was
| intentionally constructed for the sole purpose of the state
| kidnapping children? For what motivation, to what end? How
| orchestrated? Who is "the state"? Do they have a hand picked
| squad of CPS investigators to kidnap children from their
| targets, or do they just use any CPS investigator? Are the
| investigators in on it, or are they just thinking they're
| helping kids? Can you cite references for any of the answers to
| any of these questions?
| babuloseo wrote:
| But the link in question does make it seem like being a nanny
| probably could have better protections in France if uh, the
| person lost 4 years due to this charge.
| ls612 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hammock wrote:
| TLDR:
|
| There are issues with the way/how quickly we diagnose shaken baby
| syndrome without exploring other potential diagnoses, and with
| how severely/quickly we take kids away from their parents once we
| "think" we have a shaken baby
| pests wrote:
| > we diagnose shaken baby syndrome without exploring other
| potential diagnoses
|
| It's more that 'shaken baby syndrome' is caused by more things
| than just a shaken baby (and evidence that shaking does not
| cause it even.)
|
| > the more neutral and objective term of "retino-dural
| hemorrhage of infancy" (RDHI).
| boxed wrote:
| It's much worse. There's no evidence of any baby shaking. At
| all.
| rossant wrote:
| Well, I was very surprised to discover that shaking appears
| to be a highly common and widespread form of child abuse in
| the world [1]. It may affect 2-3% of all babies in the US and
| other developed countries, and the rate may be 10x or more
| higher in other countries.
|
| I think it's reasonable to say that billions of babies may
| have been shaken in the past, yet the vast majority (of the
| order of 99.9% or even much more? [2]) are not diagnosed with
| shaken baby syndrome, since this diagnosis has an incidence
| of ~1/3,000 among children < 12 months in developed
| countries. In the countries where the incidence of shaking
| appears to be >50%, it is striking to note that the SBS
| diagnosis actually does not exist, i.e. doctors are not
| trained to diagnose it.
|
| On the other hand, actual cases of severe inflicted head
| injuries probably affect < 1/10,000 children < 12 months, and
| I think most of them involve external evidence of trauma.
| Those that do not probably involve extreme forms of shaking
| far beyond what most of the billions of "shaken babies"
| sustain.
|
| In other words, I've come to the likely conclusion that the
| intersection of babies who are effectively shaken, and babies
| who are labelled with "shaken baby syndrome", is an abysmal
| proportion of the first set, and a small proportion of the
| second.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074937
| 970...
|
| [2] Excerpt from the paper above: "the ratio of children
| hospitalized or dying from inflicted neurotrauma compared to
| the numbers of reported shaken children may be estimated at 1
| to 152."
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| This doesn't do it justice. The damn name of the diagnosis
| makes it sound like a crime was committed. Guy runs an
| educational foundation on the issue that gets over 200 people a
| year asking for help in France alone.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| > has been taught as though it was a proven fact to generations
| of physicians all over the world.
|
| Welcome to healthcare. For many conditions having a medical
| degree is straight up deleterious to a doctor's ability to
| accurately diagnose and treat a condition.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| trully unbelievable, i lose faith in thr justice system day by
| day
| anon291 wrote:
| The justice system is doing what the doctors tell them. Broadly
| speaking If a medical professional testifies that this is the
| only way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him?
| Medicine is a profession; thus the professional body ought to
| be addressing this and, if the guidance changes, be advocating
| and lobbying to Congress that people start being released.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > If a medical professional testifies that this is the only
| way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him?
|
| Questioning witnesses is literally the DA's job. That doesn't
| magically stop being the case just because the witness is an
| expert. The DA is indeed qualified for this. You could even
| say it's one of the main reasons the DA exists.
| anon291 wrote:
| Got it. So the DA is supposed to not only be an expert in
| the law, but enough of an expert in medicine such that he
| can flaunt widely acknowledged medical standards while
| cross-examining expert witnesses on why they're wrong.
|
| The author of this post admitted that it took him countless
| hours to discover that medicine basically has this issue
| wrong and only after being particularly motivated to do so.
| If the DA has so much medical expertise that they know
| better than the doctors, then what exactly is he doing
| being a DA?
|
| The idea that the main purpose of the DA is to know better
| than doctors is ludicrous.
| p-e-w wrote:
| The DA's job is to question the _credibility_ of
| witnesses. If credentials conferred credibility, it
| wouldn 't be possible to ever convict an expert of
| anything.
|
| So to be plain: No, DA's don't (and aren't supposed to)
| just take experts by their word. They ask clarifying
| questions, and often bring additional experts offering
| contradicting testimony.
|
| Do you seriously think courts operate by "the doctor said
| so, case closed"? We wouldn't need courts if that were
| the case.
| anon291 wrote:
| So the defense attorney (since it wouldn't be the da
| anyway) is going to convince the jury that not just the
| witness but the entire medical profession is suspect
| because of its heretofore unanimous belief that shaken
| baby syndrome is the only explanation of these
| phenomenon.
|
| > Do you seriously think courts operate by "the doctor
| said so, case closed"? We wouldn't need courts if that
| were the case.
|
| For certain things.. yes. If a doctor tells a jury that
| these injuries could only be sustained via shaking
| trauma, most juries will believe them over a rogue doctor
| or a non doctor. Doctors have some of the highest trust
| ratings of all professions. Attorneys have some of the
| lowest. That means convincing the jury the doctors are
| wrong.
|
| The blame should lay at the feet of the medical
| professional bodies.
| parl_match wrote:
| The justice system does the best it can with the information it
| has. It is far from perfect. It makes horrible mistakes all the
| time. The problem, of course, is improving it without knock-on
| effects making it worse.
|
| There are huge swaths of people doing the work required to make
| it better, every day. It's not as easy as turning a dial from
| "bad" to "good"
| razeh wrote:
| No. When it comes to evaluating forensic evidence lawyers
| are, by training, too process oriented to solve the problems.
| Ask a prosecutor what the error rate is for fingerprints or
| DNA evidence and you'll get a blank stare. They don't even
| try to measure it.
| paiute wrote:
| A lot of doctors are process oriented as well. Which is
| fine most of the time. But I was similarly disturbed when a
| specialist had zero clue what the approx half life of one
| of the primary drugs they use was. There was a situation
| that didn't fit the book and i just looked it up for them
| on the spot. They didn't like me.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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 designed, not evidence it's badly faulty.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure, but the accused should have a lawyer who is
| screaming about anything that is unreliable.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Have you seen the caseloads of public defenders?
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| If the current functioning is it doing "the best it can", the
| whole thing should be burnt to the ground.
| goles wrote:
| If you burnt to the ground everything doing the best it can
| probably 75% of the public and every instution would
| spontaneously combust.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason
| would be much preferable
|
| surely you don't actually believe that? I don't think the
| result of this is just 0 false positives. The result of
| that is a lot more crime, and a lot more injustice.
| sneak wrote:
| I think you (as is very common) vastly overestimate the
| effect of the threat of incarceration on crime.
| iteria wrote:
| I think incarceration is very bad at deterring future
| crimes, but it very good at delaying them. Someone in
| jail for 10 years is at the very least not going to
| commit a crime for 10 years. There is some merit to that
| until we have a better system.
| 10u152 wrote:
| Forget the threat. Serial muggers/armed robbers/thugs
| need to be off the street. This "nobody should be in
| prison" rhetoric is painfully naive. Wait till you've had
| elderly/defenseless parents or friends violently mugged
| and beaten, you'll change your tune.
| dylan604 wrote:
| to be replaced with what? i'm all for making changes that
| are an improvement, but just burning it to the ground for
| the sake of it with no end game is not an improvement
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| At this point, I would not be surprised if having two
| judges per case, randomly selected from the community,
| from parents who have successfully had at least three
| children leave the nest while still remaining on speaking
| terms, was a more reliable method of justice.
| dylan604 wrote:
| isn't an even number of judges ripe for uselessness?
| sneak wrote:
| A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason
| would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the
| current criminal justice systems in most of the global
| west (and especially of course the United States).
| epivosism wrote:
| Have you thought about moving to Somalia?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Interesting and unusual perspective - we have the one
| person in this thread who supports wildly expanding the
| death penalty.
|
| Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who
| has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted
| Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian
| Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily
| flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."
| p-e-w wrote:
| > what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey
| Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell
|
| Nothing. Those people are one-in-a-million anomalies. If
| it weren't for the media hype surrounding them, their
| impact on society would be comparable to the impact of
| deaths from lightning strikes. What do we do about people
| being struck by lightning? Nothing.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_wick
| tumult wrote:
| That's not true. We have things in place to protect
| people and objects from lightning strikes. For example,
| lightning protection systems on tall buildings.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Those protect the building, not individual people. Nobody
| carries around mobile lightning rods, even though they
| were invented centuries ago.
| tumult wrote:
| It protects the people in the building. Likewise,
| arresting a serial killer protects anyone they would have
| killed next.
| Filligree wrote:
| That's nuts. Even if you were correct about that, and I'm
| not admitting any such thing, it isn't how people work.
| If the state doesn't provide justice, then the mob will.
| p-e-w wrote:
| "Justice" is an incredibly malleable idea that is largely
| shaped by what people are told. Until very, very
| recently, nobody gave a fuck about serial killers, or
| even knew they existed. If the hype stopped, there
| wouldn't be any mobs to worry about.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Define recently. There is plenty of historical hysteria
| around them. Ever heard of Jack the Ripper?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| There are also huge swaths of people actively trying to make
| it worse, that's what the FBI did (does?) for years when it
| knowingly pushed junk forensics.
|
| Or what basically every prosecution does, when it knows that
| the science behind some things isn't airtight but still
| presents it in the best possible light to get a conviction.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > junk forensics
|
| Fiber analysis (e.g. carpets)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and none as effective as this one person
|
| too many cooks in the kitchen
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| It's not a justice system, it's a Law and Order system: It's
| not designed to deliver justice, it's designed to resolve
| disputes relatively cheaply, while allowing for spending more
| money to get better results.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Nothing shook my faith in the _medical_ system more than having
| kids.
|
| Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it's
| always been. Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff
| the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident
| that they've got it right this time.
|
| And as a result you get unworthy nurses making moms feel
| intense shame for not "trying hard enough" to somehow magically
| produce milk.
| mberning wrote:
| Same experience. The medical system is a reflection of pop
| parenting culture or vice versa. Everyone was so gung ho on
| breastfeeding, but when the milk didn't come in and our son
| wasn't interested in a dry breast the only advice given was
| "keep trying". Then the shock and surprise when baby is
| losing weight. We had to demand formula, which was given
| grudgingly, and left the hospital a day later. If we have
| another we will do breast plus formula from the get go.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > We had to demand formula
|
| I don't understand. You can't just go to the store and buy
| infant formula?
| msteffen wrote:
| In the US (not sure about other countries), new parents
| often stay at the hospital where the baby was delivered
| for a few days after the birth. During this time, the
| hospital often provides them all their food and childcare
| supplies: diapers, swaddles, diaper cream, wipes, etc. To
| get formula, you have to ask the hospital for it, but if
| your nurse doesn't want to give it to you because they
| think you should try harder at breastfeeding, you get
| stuck. You could sneak out and buy some, but you're
| pretty exhausted, and your partner is still stuck with a
| screaming, hungry baby until you're back.
|
| (I realize after writing this out that being at the mercy
| of your hospital sounds draconian, but it can be really
| really great if you have a good nurse or midwife. They
| teach you how to bathe and swaddle the baby, how to
| nurse, how to rock them to sleep, etc. All skills you'll
| need once you leave)
| Huggernaut wrote:
| In the Netherlands, for the 8 days after you give birth,
| someone comes to your house for some number of hours per
| day (in our case 8) to teach you these things, maybe do
| some tidying and cooking but most importantly, take the
| baby so you can sleep! This is called kraamzorg.
|
| It also has some similar pitfalls, as they are not
| necessarily specialists and it's still hard to disagree
| or do something else even if in your own home in the face
| of the supposed expert.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's not that easy to just _know_ how parenting is going
| to work the first time around. You can be lactating prior
| to delivery and then dry up for no reason. Even worse,
| your baby can decide not to latch or be tongue-tied. If
| your husband isn't on hand to run to the store from the
| hospital, things can get challenging.
|
| We had to worry about my wife dying because they wouldn't
| suggest a C-section and we didn't think to ask for one
| (her induction didn't take for several days). We're quite
| confident they'd have let her die before suggesting one.
| Thankfully, we thought better in time.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not so easy when you are in a hospital recovering from
| birth. They generally won't allow things from offsight
| into the hospital either, so even if you (dad) goes to
| get some you have to get it in without getting caught.
|
| The other side is nursing is hard, and so it is easy to
| cheat and use formula when you could with a little effort
| nurse the baby just fine. (Nursing is generally slightly
| better for the baby, but the difference is tiny. Nursing
| is generally a lot better for the wallet though)
| p-e-w wrote:
| > The medical system is a reflection of pop parenting
| culture
|
| Indeed. And not just in relation to parenting. The average
| doctor is constantly trying to emulate TV doctors, just
| like the average police detective is influenced by what
| they see on CSI, and every archaeologist wants to be
| Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. It would be hilarious, if it
| didn't have such disastrous consequences for regular people
| every day.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Huh? Doctors don't base their decisions on House
| episodes. Not even ER episodes.
| p-e-w wrote:
| No, but they base their behavior and expectations on such
| shows. Life imitates art.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| My sister wouldn't sleep. The doctor constantly gave the
| "sigh, you're an idiot, you just do X and Y and they sleep"
| talk to my mother because nothing came up on their screening,
| even though my mother almost wanted to scream that something
| was clearly wrong and abnormal. Turns out, different doctor,
| serious vitamin deficiency.
|
| And medical incompetence by staff, not doctors, is also
| awful. My brother hated reading. He got glasses, still hated
| reading, my mother wondered why he could be so disobedient in
| that regard. They said, well, the prescription is right, he
| can clearly see fine. Turns out two years later that the
| lenses were installed _on opposite sides_. Right lens on left
| eye, left lens on right eye. A simple mistake, but the
| consequences...
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I do find it bizarre they don't verify you can see with
| your actual glasses.
| hackernewds wrote:
| How would one have tested it instead?
| analog31 wrote:
| They can verify the prescription. Also in principle they
| could use the same machine that finds the prescription,
| to verify that your net correction is zero with your
| glasses on.
|
| I once proved that my wife got the wrong prescription by
| just holding her old and new glasses up at arms length
| and seeing that things looked way different through them.
| The glasses place agreed.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| It's especially a problem with women and minorities.
| Doctors just don't believe them. I'm neither of those and I
| had to convince my doctor that I had Lyme disease. I had
| the bullseye right where the tick had bit me. It was
| clearly Lyme disease. He assumed it couldn't be because it
| took 8 weeks for the bullseye to show up (it's usually a
| matter of days in America). He did not know that European
| Lyme disease takes much longer for the bullseye to appear.
| He at least had the tact to call me later and apologize
| after he did more research
| darkclouds wrote:
| [dead]
| irjustin wrote:
| > 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 understand the
| data and that times have changed.
|
| FORMULA IS PERFECTLY FINE.
| laurent_du wrote:
| Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way
| and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this.
| Formula is the least worst substitute to maternal milk but
| going around and screaming that formula is perfectly fine,
| as if it was as good (or even better!) than maternal milk
| is denying some very well-established piece of science for
| likely ideological reasons.
| cperciva wrote:
| Milk is better than formula, but formula is better than
| starvation.
|
| There are way too many instances of infants "failing to
| thrive" because their mothers are bullied into relying on
| breast milk which they simply aren't producing enough of.
| cbsks wrote:
| It's like saying that you should only eat organic food.
| Sure, there is lots of science backing it up, but that's
| besides the point. It's not always possible or easy for
| everyone to get organic food. Any food is better than no
| food.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible
| way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around
| this.
|
| I have not seen result like this obtained in a
| randomized, controlled trial, and it is almost certainly
| false as stated: you're almost certainly exaggerating for
| effect, but doing that in scientific context is bad
| intellectual hygiene.
|
| All results of this sort that I have seen have been
| purely correlational, and as such suffer from selection
| bias. This might be true, but the evidence is far from
| conclusive, and if such consensus exists among medical
| professionals, it only shows how susceptible they are to
| groupthink and parroting the stuff they heard from the
| cathedra.
| irjustin wrote:
| And this is what I'm talking about - Clearly, you've
| never been a mother who can't produce milk for her child.
|
| I've been there with my wife and I'm only the husband.
|
| Everything you say is true, but by saying this and in
| this manner, you lack empathy. You sound just like the
| mommy blogs and their followers that I'm speaking against
| who spout facts with no room for life's situations. My
| wife sincerely believed she was less of a mother because
| of people like this.
|
| I say it again: Formula is _perfectly_ fine. Use it a
| little or as a total replacement. You're not a lesser
| mother/parent for it.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| When you say more empathy is required, do you mean the
| same thing should be phrased differently, or do you mean
| it should not be said at all?
| irjustin wrote:
| Probably something that says while breast milk is ideal,
| formula is a great alternative if it's not available.
|
| Acknowledging that formula is a safe alternative and that
| you don't need to stress.
| hackernewds wrote:
| What are some good mom blogs?
| astura wrote:
| 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.
| CrHn3 wrote:
| Formula is adequate as far as macronutrients go, but it
| lacks sugars present (at varying levels-about 20% of the
| population are FUT2 non-secretors and cannot produce the
| a1,2-fucosyltransferase enzyme that is used to make human
| milk oligosaccharides), stem cells and bacteria present in
| breast milk. Women in the US are often deficient in the
| strain that can metabolize the human milk oligosaccharides,
| b. infantis, and it's not clear afaik to what extent
| bacteria gets passed vertically in breastmilk. The microRNA
| present in breastmilk can modulate gene expression, but the
| extent and effects are unclear.
|
| B. infantis and human milk oligosaccharides create a
| feedback loop that encourages the formation of a robust
| immune system during a critical period [1]. Some formulas
| contain b. infantis, and some contain 2'FL, the HMO present
| in breastmilk. The most robust strain is EVC001, which has
| been shown to be present at a year after 21 days of
| supplementation. In an observational study, it reduced the
| diagnosis of necrotizing enterocolitis in very low birth
| rate infants by 73% [2].
|
| I wish this was common knowledge, but most formulas do not
| contain these (often they contain other pre and probiotics)
| and babies are missing out on the specific sugars and
| bacteria that we know impact the development of the immune
| system.
|
| 1. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00660-7
| 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35032555/
| irjustin wrote:
| At least this one doesn't sound as bad as the other post,
| but it's still in the same vein - you've never been a
| mother who can't produce milk for her child.
|
| I've been as the husband there and are all your facts
| don't allow for people's situations.
|
| Formula is perfectly fine.
| CrHn3 wrote:
| > you've never been a mother who can't produce milk for
| her child
|
| That's your assumption.
|
| You're missing the point, which is that you can
| supplement formula with both 2'FL and b. infantis and get
| immune system outcomes that are more similar to those
| that occur while breastfeeding [1]. The fact that milk
| typically faciliates a cascade of changes that lay the
| foundation for a healthy immune system is not at odds
| with formula feeding. Formula is adequate macronutrition,
| but if we cannot be honest about the ways in which it is
| not on par with breastmilk, we will never close the gaps.
|
| 1. https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2023/05/18/Ab
| bott-s...
| irjustin wrote:
| > That's your assumption.
|
| Oh do correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to hear your
| personal experience. Anyway...
|
| How can you close the gaps when the mother isn't
| producing milk?
|
| I'm actually confused because you keep telling me it's
| better, with links and everything, but... It's simply non
| existent for a lot of mothers. Non producing or a bad
| latch is enough to put a newborn baby at risk after one
| week.
|
| It's like you don't believe it's possible.
|
| That's why you're just like the mommy blogs. "You must
| feed 'em breast milk. It's soooooo important"
| CrHn3 wrote:
| I've breastfed multiple children with ups and downs of it
| being easy and hard, suffered through the struggle of
| learning to do it the first time as postpartum mother
| after major surgery, through teething, latch issues,
| biting, pure physical exhaustion, and the transition of
| going back to work that leads to decreased supply. I've
| watched close friends that have struggled with production
| with underweight, premature babies pump like crazy and
| feel stressed out trying to get their supply up but
| ultimately transition to formula on the advice of
| doctors. My own anxiety around combination feeding and
| not feeling like I had a clear understanding of
| differences in the microbiome with a surgical birth or
| formula use lead to me reading everything I could find to
| gain a better understanding of the differences in
| outcomes for exclusive breastfeeding, combination and
| formula feeding.
|
| We can close the gaps by subsidizing Evivo's EVC001 b.
| infantis and making it a standard that every formula
| contains 2'FL. Individuals can choose these formulas and
| purchase b. infantis already. If we were to make it so
| that all babies, not just NICU babies at hospitals aware
| of the research, get these two things, public health
| outcomes (especially those related to autoimmune
| conditions) should be better than if we continue allowing
| formula that is not as analogous with breastmilk. We can
| have better lactation support that is current and
| evidence based (such as that from ABM contributor Katrina
| Mitchell https://physicianguidetobreastfeeding.org).
|
| Another reason mom blogs are toxic is because people read
| past others points when issues are really emotionally
| charged for them. Really sorry your wife struggled.
| Formula is fine, but there are reasons breastmilk is
| pushed, especially since milk is supply and demand and
| it's hard to identify those with true low supply and
| those whose bodies just haven't ramped up production yet.
| Hopefully as a model of immune system response and the
| impact of b. infantis and HMOs gains more awareness,
| there will be less pressure since we are assured babies
| are getting many of the same benefits.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Older nurses are the best. They've seen it all.
| doublespanner wrote:
| The worst encounters I have had with nurses have been with
| older ones filtering information and using out of date
| practices because they think they have seen it all and now
| know best.
| [deleted]
| froggertoaster wrote:
| After 5 kids in 10 years, you come to realize that the
| standards aren't agreed upon, and best
| practices/recommendations change YEAR TO YEAR without fail.
|
| Breastfeeding is one of the worst things hoisted upon mothers
| who are told "you must try no matter what" - seemingly
| ignoring the mental and physical health of the mother and the
| father all the while.
| cycomanic wrote:
| My partner is a GP who has been doing early childhood
| screening. One thing she learnt after doing a special
| training is that advice on proper breastfeeding is very
| difficult to find. She found that with many mothers that
| had problems, some small adjustments could often make a
| huge difference (often causing a kind of hallelujah moment
| for the mothers). The issue is much of the advice given at
| the hospital is wrong or insufficient.
|
| The training the she did is the possums program from
| Australia, if somebody wants to look it up I think some
| resources are available for free.
| anon291 wrote:
| Completely agree. Half the lactation consultants have
| never breastfed themselves. The advice my wife got from
| the nurses versus what she got from her own mother and my
| grandmother were completely at odds. Both of those women
| told her to just keep doing it and to ignore the nurses
| while the professionals were single mindedly focused on a
| few days of weight loss. The milk came in (as all the
| older women expected) and my daughter breastfed for many
| years after.
|
| Really the advice given is simply ridiculous. I honestly
| think most men who's children have nursed can give better
| advice than the lactation consultants. One that always
| makes me roll my eyes is the idea that a breastfed child
| should eat for a few minutes and then be full for an hour
| or two. That is simply... Not how it works. Babies like
| eating and being with mom. Breastfeeding mothers should
| expect to be with their newborn all the time. We are
| lucky to know many breastfeeding mothers and I don't know
| any family where the baby is satiated after ten minutes.
| And yet... The professionals are convinced this is how it
| works
| autoexec wrote:
| There are a lot of really good benefits to breastfeeding
| but it's not going to work for everybody or in every
| situation. I wouldn't fault a doctor for recommending it,
| but they shouldn't make someone feel bad if it isn't
| working out.
|
| I want recommendations and best practices to change as our
| understanding of things improve though. The alternative
| would mean that either no more research is being done, or
| doctors are just ignoring anything they didn't learn while
| in school.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Our doctor was fine with it. The nurse called formula
| poison.
| routerl wrote:
| > Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the
| previous generations believed, and then acts so confident
| that they've got it right this time.
|
| Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a medieval
| university's oral examination on medicine: the examiner asks
| why morphine puts people to sleep, and the student
| confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative essence".
| This is a bit like saying that things with an essence of
| gravity fall towards the earth, whereas things with an
| essence of levity float towards the sky. The examiner proudly
| accepts that answer and bestows upon the student the title of
| doctor.
|
| This was very funny to anyone educated in the time Voltaire
| was writing, since they would have known that morphine puts
| people to sleep because... it has round molecules with no
| sharp edges...
|
| Edit: correction below, thank you thaumasiotes.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I used to enjoy this blog written by a person who hated US
| medical school:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsc
| h...
|
| People will probably find it offensive but it does explain
| a lot about why the stuff being taught is almost always not
| questioned.
|
| This post in particular:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101211180021/http://www.medsc
| h...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a
| medieval university's oral examination on medicine: the
| examiner asks why morphine puts people to sleep, and the
| student confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative
| essence".
|
| It was Moliere (<1622 - 1673), who wrote a play that
| featured an apothecary (explaining the functioning of
| _opium_ to laymen), but no examinations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginary_Invalid
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Our twins were put into my wife's arms, and we were wheeled
| into a room to stay for 48 hrs, being woken up every 2 hours
| by a nurse, which would wake up our kids, making the whole
| thing a living nightmare. I have no idea how I drove home.
|
| They had no care for my wife's ability to heal, rest, or
| anything, just subjecting us to the worst kind of
| institutionalized checklist torture. The medical system cares
| for nothing other than preventing lawsuits and providing a
| place for doctors to do their 1 hr of work on their 18
| patients a day.
| stephen_g wrote:
| 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'!
|
| It's just incredible the injustice that can be done in the name
| of protecting children. I really do wonder if it's cultural or
| some kind of innate psychological irrarionality that seems
| stronger in some than others. I love kids and care deeply about
| their welfare, but people sometimes try to make _me_ feel bad or
| that I'm the weird one for being able to think (I believe) fairly
| rationally about the risks and dangers that they face, instead of
| massively over-exaggerating!
|
| Or of course the opposite, keeping an appropriate eye on
| relations and acquaintances when people assume they're totally
| safe but it's actually somebody with that level of relation who's
| likely to be a danger than a stranger.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| My sense is it's important to keep in back-of-mind that there
| is a massive selection effect involved in terms of which people
| chose to enter these fields and what sorts of personal life
| events (trauma, abuse, witnessing of abuse etc) motives
| choosing to make this a career. These are not well-paid careers
| (nor are they high-status) so money and status are typically
| not motivations (in fact a relative of an in-law works in a
| closely-related field and we talk at Thanksgiving-type family
| events about work and their employers often seem to me to be
| exploiting their investment in the field). I think it's why it
| can be so difficult to discuss it with them, it is deeply
| personal and they feel the "system" failed in the past and they
| want it fixed.
|
| Anyway, it's not meant as an ad hom, but it helps to step back
| and think why people are involved with certain roles.
|
| To be clear: here the author only bothered look with his well-
| trained eyes because he was sucked in after the law intruded
| into his life. It's easy to assume that everyone is highly-
| skilled. But... highly-skilled people don't usually choose to
| work for peanuts without other reasons. Fields like this are
| neglected.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| It seems like there is still significant disagreement with this
| guy's argument in "the science", at least as best as any
| individual child welfare employee would understand it. There
| are no doubt specialist doctors, general practitioners, etc.
| telling the child welfare folks that it's as clear cut a
| diagnosis as you could get.
|
| The fact of the matter is, the article here is a brief overview
| describing none of the actual scientific literature at a level
| that should be convincing to a medical practitioner. But you
| read it and are apparently convinced of the author's point. So,
| a layperson (I assume, in your case) is presented with some
| well-written evidence from an authoritative perspective,
| alongside broad contours of the actual medical evidence but no
| details, and is convinced that it's true. Is it so hard to
| believe that a child welfare worker would be equally convinced
| under the same circumstances when talking to a doctor,
| neurologist, trauma surgeon, etc. who believes the opposite as
| this author?
| tivert wrote:
| > 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 kind of righteous moral crusade, and what
| 's more heroic than swooping in to take the child away from the
| clutches of the villain? The feelings of heroism could obscure
| understanding the harm the "heroic act" could cause.
| raducu wrote:
| > and what's more heroic than swooping in to take the child
| away from the clutches of the villain?
|
| In a (somewhat) post-scarcity society attention from others
| is hard currency and narcissism is at an all time high.
| pivot654 wrote:
| 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 are also beholden to the Courts to justify our
| decision making.
|
| The harm we cause is better explained by systematic reasons
| (workload, case complexity, red tape, worker burnout and
| apathy, racism)
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| 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.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Yeah in my dealings with child welfare workers (in America
| at least), they are the first to understand how "the
| system", and they as a key component, can cause harm.
| conductr wrote:
| > they feel themselves on a kind of righteous moral crusade
|
| They see a lot of bad stuff which causes them to have a
| difficult time admitting that sometimes bad stuff just
| happens on it's own
|
| Reminds me of the police/detectives that "just know he did
| it" because they don't understand that people grieve
| differently. I really empathize with the people that don't
| have a meltdown and cry when they hear some horrific news. I
| don't think I would either in many cases. I'd want the cops
| to do their job and go find the perp so I'd talk to them in a
| calm and concise manner telling them what I knew; even though
| that's likely highly suspicious behavior.
| rossant wrote:
| That actually happened to me, not with the police though,
| but with social workers. I explained the situation in a
| very calm, concise, and perhaps emotionally detached manner
| because this is just my personality. They wrote in their
| report that they found it strange that "I almost did not
| cry during the interview", which they said was the main
| reason they would recommend to put David in foster care.
| The guilt of knowing that I, with my personality, was
| responsible for losing his care, was devastating.
|
| I also found this argument absurd: I was suspected of
| losing my temper on my child, and it's my calmness that was
| interpreted as a sign of danger!
|
| It reminds me the Robert Roberson Texas death penalty case
| that John Grisham recently wrote about [1]: "He told
| hospital staff that she had fallen out of bed, but they
| didn't believe him. They didn't know he was autistic and
| decided he didn't show the proper emotions given the dire
| situation."
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-
| based-o...
| stephen_g wrote:
| It's especially bizarre because even apart from things
| like autism, even for more neurotypical people
| disassociation (which as I understand in mild forms can
| appear as emotional detachment which could come off as
| being calm) is a well known symptom of acute stress
| responses (i.e. psychological shock). As unreproducible
| as a lot of psychology is, putting any merit in 'they
| didn't respond how I think they "should" have' seems like
| just utterly extraordinary nonsense...
| conductr wrote:
| 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 it didn't
| weigh on me outside work (I think most healthcare workers
| can do this, it all just becomes normal.
|
| Since then, I'm the one that springs into action instead
| of paralyzed by shock/surprise. Saved someone choking in
| a restaurant, pulled a pregnant woman from a burning car
| after an accident, just a few weeks ago someone had a
| stroke at a park and I had to figure out best way to help
| - all these had many other bystanders just watching it
| happen and they all just were frozen until I came over
| and took charge barking order about call an ambulance or
| telling them exactly how to help. I've also learned that
| when something really bad happens in my life, like bad
| diagnoses/death of loved ones, my immediate response is
| to help and support what ever immediate actions are
| needed, talk about what needs to be done, help others
| experiencing immediate and usually uncontrollable grief.
| My grief usually starts a day or two later once all the
| immediate concerns are addressed.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's a lesson I've kept with me my entire life. Most of
| the time, for me to truly process things, I need to be
| alone. I have no doubt I would come across as detached
| and not caring if something tramautic were to happen to
| me.
|
| OTOH, I had to put a pet down once and I was crying like
| a baby so maybe not. I've never been in a situation where
| I haven't had time to process before really speaking
| about it to others so I really am not sure what my
| response would be.
| conductr wrote:
| > 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.
| dpeckett wrote:
| Sounds a lot like the terrible case of Lindy Chamberlain
| "A Dingo Ate My Baby"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC4cbpJeaU
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I suspect that was the motivation for Apple's iPhone client-
| side scanning and reporting of CSAM feature and the
| subsequent hard push for it.
| stephen_g wrote:
| That is a point - and also, while I'm sure many are just
| misguided, and I generally don't want to assume malice when
| ignorance is a more likely cause, it is certainly interesting
| that some high-profile people on these 'heroic moral
| crusades' do then seem to get caught up in sexual misconduct
| scandals of their own surprisingly frequently...
| rossant wrote:
| Exactly. I met many people like this. The notion of
| groupthink comes to mind: "Unquestioned belief in the
| morality of the group, causing members to ignore the
| consequences of their actions."
|
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
| jvanderbot wrote:
| 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 immediate safety of the child while
| the investigation is ongoing but even that is considered
| temporary.
|
| The goal of any foster care situation is to get the kids back
| with the biological parents, so time is on their side,
| provided they are not living in a circumstance that disallows
| the kind of attendance and involvement that the state would
| require to clear a caseworker to re-unite the family. Sadly,
| many are.
|
| Source: Foster parent.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| 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.)
| moffkalast wrote:
| "We need to take away your kid because um.. DEUS VULT."
| gwd wrote:
| 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 _they personally_ have likely caused untold
| suffering to parents, caretakers, and children.
|
| This is hard for anyone; but if you've lived your life trying
| to be the hero, feeling good about swooping in and rescuing
| children from the clutches of evil villains, how can you face
| the fact that _you_ are the evil villain in so many children
| 's stories?
|
| You might call this the Paradox of Judgment: If you don't say
| that something is that bad, then lots of people don't think
| it's a big deal and don't do anything about it. But if you
| _do_ say that something is really bad, then there develop all
| these pathologies of denialism around it.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Interestingly enough, no bigger offender then the
| psychiatric and mental health community. There's a very
| sophisticated system for shutting down criticism and
| lashing out at patients that have civil rights concerns.
|
| They do a lot of mental gymnastics trying to run from the
| idea that their main function is to imprison and take away
| peoples rights, often without due process.
|
| Medical industry is rife with abuse. They routinely kill
| people out of spite, torture dying people and their
| families, and want to be shielded from any criticism... so
| fuck all the patients and look for reasons they're "not
| righteous", etc, so you can dismiss them.
|
| It's quite interesting (and disturbing) to see how much
| culture evolves around deflecting blame and victim blaming.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of the Rosenhan Experiment[1].
| "The first part involved the use of healthy associates or
| "pseudopatients" (three women and six men, including
| Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory
| hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12
| psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United
| States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric
| disorders. ... The second part of his study involved a
| hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send
| pseudopatients to its facility, whose staff asserted that
| they would be able to detect the pseudopatients. Rosenhan
| agreed, and in the following weeks 41 out of 193 new
| patients were identified as potential pseudopatients,
| with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one
| psychiatrist and one other staff member. Rosenhan sent no
| pseudopatients to the hospital."
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
| dekhn wrote:
| My favorite control experiment! Tell somebody you did
| something and ask them what the results were, but don't
| actually do the something.
|
| "Honey, I doubled the salt in the pasta this time, how
| does it taste?" "Oh, it's really salty". "Ha-HA! I didn't
| actually add ANY salt!"
|
| (do not actually do this to people you like or who like
| you)
| oooyay wrote:
| 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."
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| 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.
| rossant wrote:
| This is spot on. This psychological barrier is probably the
| number one obstacle to a wider recognition of the existence
| and extent of this problem.
|
| People like me who challenge the science behind the
| diagnoses of SBS face an absolutely unprecedented and
| unreasonable pushback, like I've never seen in any other
| area. Basically everyone who has worked on this side has
| faced threats, insults, personal attacks, cancellations,
| boycotts, and so on. The "cognitive bias" you mention (does
| it have a name? perhaps cognitive dissonance?) is a likely
| reason for this amount of antagonism.
| mabcat wrote:
| Closest name I can think of is "commitment and
| consistency". People tend to behave as they have behaved
| in the past, doing so is both a cognitive shortcut and a
| source of positive emotion. We go to great lengths to
| maintain consistency (see also: confirmation bias), and
| being consistent even in the face of conflicting evidence
| feels _better_ than being inconsistent but right.
|
| From Cialdini: "Once we have made a choice or taken a
| stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal
| pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.
| Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that
| justify our earlier decision."
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| In my head -- and I'm no doctor, believe you me! -- I
| call this "emotional inertia", which is a phrase I've
| borrowed from one of the many doctors who has treated me
| for depression.
| gwd wrote:
| It certainly would be a form of cognitive dissonance, but
| that's _much_ more general; I experienced cognitive
| dissonance hearing the word "nicht" pronounced by a
| native German speaker yesterday evening, because it
| wasn't at all like what I expected it to sound like.
|
| "Confirmation bias", where you tend to see what you
| expect to see, is narrower; but still I think doesn't
| capture what we're talking about. We're specifically
| talking about resistance to accepting the idea because
| accepting it would mean reclassifying actions you
| yourself had taken from "very good" to "very bad". It's
| kind of weird that it doesn't have a name -- I'm
| convinced it plays a pretty big part of human behavior,
| much more than is commonly acknowledged.
| rossant wrote:
| > We're specifically talking about resistance to
| accepting the idea because accepting it would mean
| reclassifying actions you yourself had taken from "very
| good" to "very bad".
|
| That's _exactly_ it. I 'd love to discover scientific
| literature about this phenomenon, and I'd also be
| surprised if it doesn't already have a name and an
| extensive literature. But if that's the case: I think
| there are research carriers in psychology to make here...
|
| Edit: ChatGPT found "belief perseverance" [1] but, again,
| that's not exactly what we're talking about, which also
| relates to a personal sense of morality and "being one of
| the good guys".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
| gwd wrote:
| You could call it "moral self-image maintenance bias": A
| bias towards maintaining your self-image as an upright,
| moral person.
| tivert wrote:
| I think it's probably just a kind of "avoidance" or
| "denial."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_avoidance
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_(Freud)
|
| HN and software engineers have bias to over-focus on the
| cognitive, but I think the key experience here is
| _emotional distress_.
| rossant wrote:
| I agree. It's kind of ironic you mention "denial". It
| turns out this is one of the favorite attacks by "SBS
| proponents" against those who challenge the scientific
| reliability of the diagnosis. We are called "denialists"
| and we're accused of "denying the existence of child
| abuse" (?). Parents in my organization (Adikia) who face
| false allegations of abuse are said to be in "denial" of
| their own abusive behavior. This story line appears to be
| quite credible and powerful within the medical and
| judicial communities.
|
| Here's one among thousands of examples, from a really
| terrible paper by one such powerful SBS proponent here in
| France [1] (another of his papers was actually retracted
| this year [2]).
|
| "Fake news 11: the caretakers' denial is sincere
|
| Clinicians and defenders can become intoxicated by the
| denials of parents suffering the agony of having their
| child in dire condition, and at the same time being
| grilled for their possible responsibility. The mental
| mechanisms of self-denial are well-known to
| psychiatrists. A perpetrator, after a violent burst, and
| faced with its terrible consequences, can experience a
| dissociation mechanism similar to witnesses of
| catastrophes, dissociation being understood as "a break
| between the memory, the perception, the consciousness and
| the identity...when faced with unbearable feelings".
| Sincere denial easily elicits compassion from the medical
| staff as well as defenders, a natural response which is
| enhanced by professional training. Some authors have
| documented with functional imaging the sincerity of
| denial in a case of convicted child abuse and concluded
| that the sincerity of denial is not a criterion for
| innocence."
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-021-
| 05357-8
|
| [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-023-
| 05889-1
| gwd wrote:
| You obviously have more experience than I do; but two
| phrases I'd be tempted to try out in these discussions
| are, "If you were wrong, would you want to know?" And at
| some point later "How would you know if you were wrong?"
| gwd wrote:
| I phrased it that way because I think this kind of
| influence on our judgement is pervasive: we all have our
| "thumbs on the scale" when evaluating our own behavior.
| That's bias. But at some point it's not a "thumb on the
| scale" anymore -- you've just thrown the scale away;
| that's denial.
|
| Still, there are different types and sources of denial,
| just as there are different sources of emotional bias.
| "Self-image maintenance bias" and "self-image maintenance
| denial" can both be about general ways in which we try to
| maintain our self image (as strong, talented, attractive,
| whatever). "Moral self-image maintenance bias" or "moral
| self-image maintenance denial" can be about ways in which
| we try to maintain our self-image as good, decent people.
| alexashka wrote:
| It's the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| This is why Max Planch (German physicist) has quipped
| that science advances one funeral at a time.
| NiloCK wrote:
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| My theory is that emotionally charged issues seem like a haven
| for people not thinking clearly and cover for hand waving or
| opposing any thoughtful analysis.
|
| I think there are people drawn to the absolutes. I can maybe
| see how it can be comforting to have a black and white issue to
| try to solve / help. A good side to be a part of in a world
| that to some seems very bad or confusing.
|
| Some old friends of mine are very much into these kinds of
| children's issues. But when they talk to you about it it's all
| emotion, it's not even clear to me that they know much at all
| other than a sense that the bad guys are out there, maybe some
| strange legislation they support and so on. They're not
| interested in justice, just this absolute sorta cause.
| rossant wrote:
| I agree. This is clearly visible in trials where emotion
| plays a big part. An innocent childminder being charged with
| murder can't really compete with the extraordinarily charged
| testimony of grieving, devastated and sincere parents who
| have been made to believe in the strongest way possible that
| she killed their baby.
| [deleted]
| michael1999 wrote:
| Baby-stealing is a deep drive.
| sam_goody wrote:
| > It's just incredible the injustice that can be done in the
| name of protecting children
|
| Whatever it is:
|
| - If it's in the name of protecting the children, odds are it
| is not justice.
|
| - If it is not justice, at some point the excuse will be to
| protect the children
| smolder wrote:
| > - If it is not justice, at some point the excuse will be to
| protect the children
|
| I don't think this is a very solid maxim. It seems to imply
| things other than justice can only occur if protecting
| children is a claimed motive.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| >I really do wonder if it's cultural or some kind of innate
| psychological irrarionality that seems stronger in some than
| others.
|
| CPS is a human organization. There are no algorithms and the
| guidelines rarely perfectly fit the situation a case worker is
| given. Keep this in mind. CPS is horrifically under funded
| meaning that intelligent and competent staff readily leave the
| field for better paying gigs.
|
| The biggest problem I see with foster care at large is the
| rampant classism, sexism, racism, and other isms. The providers
| tend to be solidly middle class degree bearing people who have
| no personal connection to primary instigating factors of foster
| care involvement. Namely and typically presenting cross
| generationally: poverty, crimes of despair or desperation, and
| trauma whether that be internal or external to the family unit
| or community such as neighborhood violence, caregiver assault,
| or tragic loss.
|
| It easy for providers to casually profile incoming children and
| their families as poor uneducated violent predacious drug
| dealing junkies. Providers are given extreme control over the
| entire family and their extended relations and use this power
| to coerce whatever behavior they desire out of the people. If
| the provider dislikes the family they have a lot of tools to
| inflict suffering on them and oppositely they have a lot of
| tools to assist families and keep them together.
|
| Honestly, the entire system is such a god damn mess that it
| should be rebuilt with the same level of distrust of staff that
| they can exercise against families.
|
| Perhaps the most pressing single metric to focus may be the
| foster to prison pipeline.
|
| Sorry for the meandering post, bookcases could be filled with
| anecdotes and descriptions of the flaws in these systems. In
| general, I think the failure of child protection agencies
| reflects the decay in America at large. I could point to stuff
| like broken family units or loss of religions community but I'm
| not dog whistling here. Stable healthy nurturing familial units
| of any relation are obviously better but man in the house rules
| and other racist/classist measures caused more harm. I'm also
| vehemently opposed to all major organized religions that are
| regularly used to justify war and protect child sex predators.
| Perhaps the collapse of American industry and slow erosion of
| social safety nets has hastened the social collapse. Perhaps
| the internet had instigated the collapse of communal
| organizations. Perhaps winner take all government enforced
| monopoly capitalism is the cause. Perhaps it was the theft of
| 50,000,000,000.00 from the bottom 99 by the 1% that lead to
| this. Regardless, the solution is not going to be found in
| rebuilding foster care when our social fabric is rotten.
|
| 0. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sop2.10
|
| 1. https://www.crimlawpractitioner.org/post/the-foster-care-
| to-....
|
| 3. https://nlihc.org/resource/study-examines-man-house-rules-
| vo...
|
| 4. https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-
| ameri...
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I have some inside information on how this plays out in
| Ontario, Canada, at least. One of my family members was a
| lawyer for the regional Children's Aid, and I worked for him
| for a few years. Another family member was a child protection
| social worker for two decades, but retired early because they
| felt the organization didn't prioritize the welfare of children
| (as is their mandate) but rather the needs of the organization
| or (perhaps more realistically) the needs of their own careers.
|
| MANY social workers feel this way. They got into the field out
| of a genuine concern for the well-being of the most vulnerable
| members of our society, and instead found themselves dealing
| with politics (both real and office).
|
| I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in my region,
| they actually appoint a lawyer for the child. This is great,
| but it also tells you a lot about what everyone else's
| priorities are that children need their own lawyers:
|
| (1) Parents want their kids back, of course. Not all parents
| are fit to get them back. But their lawyers fight for the
| return of their kids regardless of circumstances or reasons for
| their removal.
|
| (2) Child protection agencies are under constant attack, so at
| the executive level, they lose sight of the individual kids and
| are instead worried about the needs of the organization and
| public relations.
|
| (3) The social workers themselves are handcuffed to do anything
| about it and have to follow procedure, even if they can see it
| plainly that the procedure is not in the best interests of the
| child.
|
| (4) Police want nothing to do with any of it and are quick to
| wash their hands of these situations.
|
| (5) The children's lawyer somehow has to represent the needs of
| the child, which may place them at odds with their own clients
| (the kids).
|
| (6) Activist groups will generally support the parents blindly,
| because by law, for the privacy of the children, the only
| parties listed above who can publicly speak about any given
| case are the parents themselves. So you can only ever hear one
| side of the argument. That's right: If a father, for example,
| sexually abuses his kids and as a result has them removed, he's
| free to say just about anything he likes about the matter,
| without ever acknowledging that he's a child molester. The
| other parties can't say a thing about this.
|
| As a result, it's impossible, as a member of the public, to
| ever know whether it was appropriate or not that the children
| were removed from the care of their parents. I happen to know,
| from first-hand experience, that it's a mixed bag: Some parents
| shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any child ever, much less
| their own. Others are victims of a system gone haywire. And we,
| the concerned public, can't have an informed discussion about
| any of it.
|
| All in all, it transforms child protection into a game of who-
| has-the-best-lawyers rather than trying to do what's right for
| the kids. Is it any wonder so many kids end up traumatized by
| this system?
| zdragnar wrote:
| There's a bias in favor of action, especially among the social
| workers that I have known. The worst possible sin is to do
| nothing at all.
|
| In cases like this, in the moment, it may be impossible to tell
| what is actually best for the child. Since removing the child
| is a form of remediation, it can easily seem to be less harmful
| than leaving them in a situation that might be actively harming
| them.
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