POST: "Guilty of intellectual dishonesty," by Sue Luttner, published on her authoritative Blog "On SBS" on March 14, 2016, as an "outrageous story."
GIST: "In
a 96-page decision packed with irony, the Medical Practitioners
Tribunal Service (MPTS) in Britain has declared pediatric
neuropathologist Waney Squier guilty of practicing outside her area of
expertise, ignoring the opinions of her peers, and bringing the
reputation of the medical profession into disrepute with her testimony
and written opinions in a series of shaken baby cases she helped defend
between 2007 and 2010. “The tribunal is in no doubt you have been a person of good character
and have not acted dishonestly in the past,” the statement offers, but
it characterizes her opinions about shaken baby syndrome as “dogmatic,
inflexible and unreceptive to any other view” and declares her work in
the arena “misleading,” “irresponsible,” and even “dishonest.”.........Dr. John Plunkett, a pathologist who has fought off
charges of perjury for his testimony regarding shaken baby theory, pointed out that Dr. Squier is receiving a
Champion of Justice award
next month at the annual Innocence Network conference in San Antonio,
Texas. “How is it that the Innocence Network can give this award to Dr.
Squier if the GMC has correctly characterized her behavior as dishonest
and worthy of sanction?” he asked. One mother who stood by her husband while he successfully fought accusations of shaking their child told me, “
If
not for the strength, fortitude, and technical expertise that Dr.
Squier has shown, my family would most assuredly have been ripped apart
by well-meaning but ignorant medical staff.”.........The charges against Dr. Squier are consistent with a strategy
advocated by Detective Inspector Colin Welsh of New Scotland Yard in
2010 at the
11th International Conference on Shaken Baby Syndrome for improving the conviction rate in these cases by neutralizing experts willing to testify for the defense (see “
Back Door Tactics Show Through“)
Proponents of shaking theory also
ridicule their critics at conferences and
scorn them in print, and in 2014 they
attempted to block the premiere showing of the documentary
The Syndrome, which
they dismissed as “a national platform for the tiny handful of
well-known child abuse defense witnesses to publicize their fringe
message.” An
editorial this winter in the journal
Pediatric Radiology,
“Child Abuse: We Have Problems” by Dr. Peter J. Strouse, declares that
“child abuse denialists” now pose “a growing threat to the health care
of children and the well-being of children and families,” and calls on
institutional rejection of doctors who defy the common knowledge about
child abuse........Even in this environment, Dr. Squier has been willing to say in print
and in court what her own research and experience were telling her
about shaken baby theory. I am in awe of both of her intellectual
honesty and her courage, and I am horrified at Friday’s decision. The
only silver lining I can think of is that maybe, this time, they have
gone too far. The ironically named “determination of facts” released on
Friday will not hold up to the scrutiny that Dr. Squier’s own work has
already survived (see, for example,
“When Pie in the Sky Turns Out to Be Dawning Knowledge”).
