Of note is Patrick Barnes, then a pediatric radiologist at Children’s who testified against Louise Woodward. The British nanny became a tabloid sensation when she was tried, convicted and served a short sentence for fatally shaking a Newton baby.
From the Time’s Sunday Magazine:
He had written, with another doctor, a chapter in a textbook that embraced the traditional theory of shaken-baby syndrome and shared the assumptions that pointed to Woodward’s guilt.
Barnes testified for the prosecution at the trial, saying Matthew’s brain scans showed his injuries were a result of shaking as well as a skull fracture. The prosecutors also asked Barnes to help them prepare for their cross-examination by briefing them on what to expect from the defense’s doctors. He spent evenings watching Court TV tapes of their testimony. He heard doctors from fields other than pediatrics — biomechanics, neurosurgery and neuropathology — discuss scientific findings about traumatic brain injury that contradicted his belief in the traditional method for diagnosing shaken-baby syndrome. He started to question his assumptions. “I’d been in lockstep with the child-abuse establishment for 20 years,” he told me. “For the first time, I saw that there were well-qualified experts on the other side giving opinions I’d never heard, that I knew nothing about.”
Also note the debate — mentioned in the story — on WBUR’s blog Commonhealth:
This magazine article is much more balanced than the Op-Ed contribution by law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer that the Times ran last September, saying that experts were questioning the scientific basis of the syndrome. That piece raised an outpouring of objections from medical and legal experts here on CommonHealth. But this new article will surely still prompt some powerful reactions. I particularly liked this summing-up of why the issue is so fraught: