Expert Witnesses

What is an ‘Expert Witness’?

Perhaps we should really ask ‘What is an Expert?’.

A genuine expert is someone who knows everything about a particular subject. There are very few subjects that anyone could claim that they know everything about. There are many subjects that very little is known about and therefore no-one can claim to be an expert. I worked with a man who had spent 30 years calculating the settings and other parameters for pressure control valves. In this very narrow field he could be considered to be an expert. ( He did have the unfortunate habit of going to sleep whilst working, still holding his slide rule up in front of his eyes, but totally asleep.)

Would he classified as an expert engineer? Not really, there are thousands of such narrow specialisations possible in engineering, although generally engineers tend to have a wide range of knowledge within engineering and prefer not to specialise because it is boring and reduces your job prospects. (I once interviewed a candidate for a job that needed a reasonable proficiency in steelwork construction. He had worked in the engineering office of a company involved primarily in structural steel for the oil and gas industry. He told me that he had worked for this company for 24 years, producing manufacturing drawings, but then stated that he did not do calculations! I questioned him further on this point and he told me that he had never, ever,  done calculations in his job, and wouldn’t know how to start!)

An expert chemist would be able to give you the exact formulation for any substance you required to suit your exact specification. There are no expert chemists. This is not the fault of the chemists, there is so little knowledge available on chemistry. Most chemists are involved in finding knowledge that in the far future may produce ‘An Expert Chemist’.

The same problem applies to biology, both human and animal. We are probably 2000 years away from producing a ‘medical expert’, even just considering human biology. Even this may never happen due to variables caused by the Golden Ratio in biology. (See “Origin of the Golden Section _ Rev 2.”).

Someone could have all the knowledge that is known or has ever been known about a particular subject and yet be essentially ignorant of the subject.

It is essntial that people should be aware of things that they do not know. A child of age five can be forgiven for thinking that he/she is an expert on language after learning to read. By the age of 11 years they should start to understand that they are not experts. At the ages of 15 and 18 there are more shocks for them. At university they start again being ‘dumb kids’ (according to their teachers).

We now come to a further problem. Tuition is about passing knowledge from teacher to student. The knowledge passed on is limited to the knowledge available to the teacher. In subjects like medicine and chemistry there is very little actually known about the subjects. ( If you are a university student you may argue that there is too much to learn already, and you would be correct.) To become  expert in these subjects you would spend your whole life at university just covering existing knowledge. But humanity is still at the very beginnings of its knowledge of these subjects. Obviously, we cannot wait a thousand years for an expert to finally come along to solve our medical problems, so we have to guess, keep trying different options etcetera in the hope of finding something that works. This struggle is part of human evolution.

So, when you refer to an expert in medical terms, you are referring to someone who has a very small amount of knowledge of a subject that is colossal in scale.

Over 50 years ago I was suffering from quite severe stress and depression (work related). I finally went to my local chemist. and I was given a quarter pint bottle of a oily looking yellow liquid. I was told to take two tablespoonful per day until I was OK. In three days I was fit and raring to go. I did not have any more of the medicine, nor have I ever needed it since. It was highly effective and was not addictive. Compare this with the £millions spent on addictive drugs that just don’t work for stress and depression patients. This remedy cost me about 6 shillings, a minute fraction of the cost of (non-working) modern equivalents. It should be clear that that the  ‘medical experts’ were not actually experts then, nor are they experts now. The same argument must apply to the manufacturers of the high priced ‘non-working’ medicines. I do not know if the medicine I received was a proprietary product or was prepared by the chemist himself.

So what is an “Expert Witness”?

First of all he/she will probably be a ‘specialist’ not an expert. Secondly, the word ‘witness’ means that you have seen and/or examined something.

In a law court  an ‘expert witness’ may say that he examined a victim and observed spots on the victims back, or an axe embedded in the victims head, or cyanide in the victims organs. He will be able to supply photographs or test results to prove his statements.

Unfortunately, he is then asked for his opinion on what these results mean. Only ‘expert witnesses’ are ever asked for their opinions, ‘ordinary witnesses’ are banned from expressing opinions.

However, ‘opinions’ should never be considered as evidence.  Preconceived ideas affect opinions. An ‘ordinary witness’  may or may not have any preconceived ideas about the evidence, but an ‘expert witness’  almost certainly will. His opinions will generally be governed by the opinions of his teachers and those of the authors of books on his specialist subject, and almost certainly by the current medical ‘fashion’. It wasn’t so long ago that any man visiting the doctor was first asked if he wore tight underpants. If you unfortunately said yes, you were told to go home, buy some new underpants and come back in 6 weeks if that didn’t cure the problem. That is now out of fashion, because I have not been asked that in over ten years.

This is a problem of education. Technical subjects have a fairly intense educational programme that means the student must pass the exams every year. Examination success depends on remembering the information that you have been taught. The student does not have time to analyse what he is being taught, he just has to believe that it is the truth. If he passes all his exams he then starts his career and then for years he does not have time to analyse the validity of what he is practising. (Years ago I often visited hospital accommodation blocks across Britain. In most cases the doctor residents appeared to need medical attention more than the patients they were looking after.)

It is only a few years ago when younger doctors were working over 100 hours per week. This does not leave a lot of time for eating, sleeping, recreation and a love life. It leaves no time for medical research or analysing the work that they do.

The Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Author. Brian Williams

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Further Reading from other sites

The Five Percenters
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London
England.

Tel. Number:  020 7639 0942.

email: sbs5@dircon.co.uk

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New Research on SBS.PDF

University of Winconsin Law School

Legal Studies Research Paper Series. Paper No. 1195

Shaken Baby Syndrome, Abusive Head Trauma, and Actual Innocence:

Getting it Right

This paper can be downloaded free of charge at;

http://ssm.com/abstract=2048374

Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Justice System.

The modern version of the Shaken Baby Syndrome presents some rather novel aspects of the justice system.

1.         The accuser is nearly always the main suspect, i.e., the hospital.

2.         The accused are nearly always the person or persons least capable of defending themselves.

3.         The accused are nearly always prevented from accessing evidence.

4.         The so called ‘investigators’ are all part of the prosecution team.

5.         No evidence is necessary to obtain a conviction, but evidence is needed to obtain an acquittal.

6.         The accused are deemed to be guilty unless proven to be innocent.

Intriguing, isn’t it?

Let us consider the above statements.

1          Most shaken baby cases arise after hospital births. Births are traumatic and cause  damage to both child and mother. That this trauma and damage is generally unavoidable does not alter the fact that the hospital were involved with this trauma and damage. Even the ‘real’ indications of  Shaken Baby Syndrome (damage to arms and neck) could be caused during the birth process.

Therefore the hospital must be considered to be the prime suspect.

2.         A young couple are expecting a happy event. The happy event happens and the couple are deliriously happy. After a few weeks it becomes obvious to the parents that there is something wrong with the baby and they take it to the doctor or to hospital. They are obviously worried. They are then accused by the doctor of deliberately causing injuries to the child. Not accidentally, but deliberately.

The parents are then in a state of shock from which they will never completely recover.

This mental trauma is deliberately caused by people whom the couple trusted implicitly, and is normally a knee jerk reaction from the doctors. Previous medical problems or birth problems are not checked until long after the charges are made.

3.         The doctor now informs the Social Services (SS) that he has charged the parents. Any investigation is then supposed to be handled by the SS. However, they no not  have any expertise in medical matters, nor do they seem to have any investigation experience. Any experienced investigator would recover/copy all medical records  immediately before they can even start an investigation. This never happens with the SS. Months can go by before any records are made available, especially to the defence. Without full medical records the defence cannot begin to prepare their case.

4.         The Social Services normally only ‘investigate’ the parents, never do they investigate the doctors or hospital. In general, their investigations actually amount to continuous attempts to get one or other of the parents to confess to shaking the baby. Therefore the SS become part of the prosecution team.

5.         Very rarely is evidence pertaining to the cause of the injuries produced in court.   The verdict is usually arrived at by vote amongst the medical experts attending the final hearing. The voting is normally split between the paediatric ‘experts’ who vote guilty and various other experts who’s vote can be split.

However, usually the other experts votes are dependant on the information supplied by the paediatrics department of the hospital in which the birth occurred.

6.         From the instant that the doctor makes the charge against the parents there are assumed to be guilty. Added to this problem is that the SS department try to insist on secrecy between them and the parents during the claimed ‘investigations’. This normally prevents the parents from obtaining expert help. A further problem is that the defence is prevented from presenting evidence before the court case.

The problem with expert witnesses is that they may arrive at a situation were they ought to vote one way, but doing so would invalidate their decisions in previous cases. Therefore their decision making is affected by their statements made in other cases.

Shaken Baby Syndrome has nothing to do with retinal haemorrhages or brain damage. It is strictly related to damage to the arms and/or neck.

The triad of symptoms currently being claimed by paediatricians to be caused by baby shaking are actually symptoms commonly caused by birth trauma.

Damage to the child’s head during the birth process can cause subdural haematoma that in turn can cause hydrocephalus (brain swelling), which in turn can cause retinal haemorrhages.

What hospitals have done is to take the symptons of the Shaken Baby Syndrome, (which is a sensible, scientific and logical set of symptoms), added in symptoms that are common in child birth, and then deleted the symptoms actually relating to the Shaken Baby Syndrome.  Justice or corruption?

See Retinal Haemorrhages on this web site.

Author; Brian Williams.

See also; http://medicalmisdiagnosisresearch.wordpress.com/

Shaken Baby Syndrome – Preliminaries

You will not find much humour in this series of posts. The original report on which it based was produced while I was in a state of anger, over many months, at the lack of honesty and professionalism by the prosecution.

Syndrome – From Google.

1. A group of symptoms that consistently occur together or a condition characterized by a set of associated symptoms.
2. A characteristic combination of opinions, emotions or behavior.

In the ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome‘ the original symptom responsible for the name was damage done to the upper arms of a  baby or child. This  could be bruising, breakages or shoulder dislocations, or a combination of these. Later, in some cases, damage was discovered to the child’s neck. These symptoms should normally lead to the suspicion of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

This type of injury is not, in itself, proof of the baby being shaken. Some-one catching a falling child could accidentally inflict the same injuries. Bruising on one side of one arm alone would indicate the possibilty of a falling injury.

A falling child could suffer a single arm bruising, neck injury and broken arm. A child falling downstairs could have all of the above injuries.

Neck injuries without damage to the upper arms should indicate that  ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ does not apply.

‘None shaking’ neck injuries would show bruising or cuts to the head or neck.

Now consider the following extract from Google

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a triad of medical symptoms: subdural haematoma, retinal hemorrhage, and brain swelling from which doctors, consistent with current medical understanding, infer child abuse caused by intentional shaking. In a majority of cases there is no visible sign of external trauma.

SBS is often fatal and can cause severe brain damage, resulting in lifelong disability. Estimated death rates (mortality) among infants with SBS range from 15% to 38%; the median is 20%–25%. Up to half of deaths related to child abuse are reportedly due to shaken baby syndrome. Nonfatal consequences of SBS include varying degrees of visual impairment (including blindness), motor impairment (e.g. cerebral palsy) and cognitive impairments.

Notice the complete lack of any mention of arm injuries or neck injuries.

A few years ago I was requested to carry out an investigation into the medical evidence presented by the prosecution in a case claiming that the parents had caused life threatening injuries to their infant son by seriously shaking him and throwing onto the  floor or onto a hard object.

The prosecution team (against the parents) included 12 consultants and 6 Social Services personnel. The defense team proposed by the Social Services, comprised the parents, an inexperienced solicitor and a medical consultant who was later revealed as a professional prosecution witness in this type of case. (The social Services admitted that they had to work in accordance the charges, and spent most of their time attempting to get the parents to admit their guilt.) The parents had been told by the Social Services that they must not tell any-one about what was happening, but the parents had more sense and told their parents.

The family then decided that  they would have to handle the defense themselves, and began collecting published medical information. I became involved when I was asked to draft a letter for them repudiating some legal point.

After many months I did manage to prove that the parents were not guilty, and that the damage occurred at the hospital.

What was the damage?

Subdural haematomas.

Retinal Haemorrhages.

Brain Swelling.

So we had the situation that the child had all the symptoms claimed by the prosecution to prove ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome, but I could prove that the damage actually occurred at the hospital. This throws the validity of all the evidence required for justification of ‘shaken baby’ trials into serious doubt.

The interesting point about all this is that the prosecution was instigated and controlled by the people responsible for the injuries

The medical use of the Shaken Baby Syndrome has become a ( as stated under Syndrome –  category 2),

“A characteristic combination of opinions, emotions or behavior.”

Unfortunately this relates to medical professionals, not patients.

If you or anyone known to you is accused of ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’, get a solicitor or lawyer to insist on the immediate release of copies of all medical records relating to the child.

In this particular case the first item of the medical records was accidentally received by the defense 5.5 months after the charges were made, despite repeated request for full records. Some items presented to the court by the prosecution were forgeries.

Author – Brian Williams – Contact e-mail —nets@talktalk.net

Additional Reading.
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