Chris Brook

When rubbish science sends the innocent to jail smh.com.au/national/when-…

@jeremy_gans Hahaha ...90percent of forensics would be (rightly) wiped out if that happened. I love justice Walker for trying to raise standards but most of her colleagues lack her scientific literacy .

“Walker’s updated note on expert evidence now demands that where scientific, medical or technical evidence is led, the prosecution or defence should ensure it is “repeatable, reproducible and accurate”.”: theage.com.au/national/when-…

Lucy Letby is not innocent because her friends say she’s incapable of murder - she is innocent because the evidence shows she did not do anything wrong. There is ZERO evidence that the babies were harmed deliberately. Their deteriorations and failed resuscitations were entirely explainable by pre-existing conditions and shockingly poor standards of care. The prosecution’s case rested on the opinions of a single man with no relevant or recent neonatal experience - a self-promoting “expert” witness who claimed to have “only ever lost one case” and advanced bizarre implausible theories which brought him a generous income. Crucial evidence of systemic failings and negligent care was ignored. Several clinicians involved have since been referred to the GMC, the police, and the coroner’s court for actions or failures that may constitute gross negligence manslaughter, contempt of court, and perjury. This is NEW evidence. While experts may disagree on the specific causes of each deterioration or failed resuscitation, the public fail to understand how this is completely normal in complex medical cases (hence the concept of multiple differential diagnoses 🙄🙄) - there is clear unanimous agreement on two core aspects of the case - the standard of care these babies received was appalling. And no murders occurred. The now-infamous “post-it note” evidence was misinterpreted and used manipulatively - a deeply flawed tactic that has been heavily precedented in other “caregiver” miscarriages of justice. The “statistics” presented to the jury were laughably biased. The data was cherry picked to suit a narrative by doctors who could well have been struck off for incompetence or arrested for gross negligence manslaughter. Police refused to investigate any cause of death other than murder. Parents were misled and gaslit into believing their babies were deliberately harmed - long before the case even went to court. Judge Goss allowed this miscarriage to unfold despite warnings. He allowed the doctors who were witnesses of fact to be treated as experts and thus to mark their own substandard work as excellent in front of a jury of lay people. Media coverage was biased, sensationalist and instrumental in stoking a public witch hunt. Whistleblowers stayed silent for fear of being scapegoated. Others were actively ignored by Cheshire police and LJ Thirlwall. The legal profession oversaw a trial with no defence witnesses that was so one-sided it defied basic principles of logic, never mind justice. This case is a national disgrace. It should shame the British legal system and the NHS and turn both into a global laughingstock.

Highly recommend this podcast. New series released. So compelling. podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/del…

Dispute over lead Starship radiologist's diagnosis of 19 rib fractures – man in prison A child’s rib fractures were central to conviction of a young father. Three overseas experts say there was no evidence of fractures. newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/05/dis…

@BreakellWe60182 @SpringFord14 @MartynPitman You think that science gets "tested" in a court!? Evans evidence was not tested until actual experts looked at it after court and showed it to be garbage. He is not alone though...Child abuse pediatrians have provided junk science in UK courts in literally thousands of cases

@SpringFord14 @MartynPitman You might then want to look at the expert opinion of those at the trial. Dr marnerides / prof Arthur’s for example. Evans not alone. Wealth of evidence over a 10 month trial. The untested opinion of the MacDonald panel need to be for sure tested. They will be.

Across my over 3 decades of working in the NHS, I had the immense privilege of working with some incredibly talented and skilled Medics and Surgeons. In my experience, the very best and most talented were often the most modest and self-deprecating.

@GilbertPedNeuro @AnnalsCNS @WileyNeuro 1. Severity is not a clinical factor that allows accurate diagnosis of AHT onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…. 2. Death is an outcome of clinical findings, not a clinical finding itself. 3. why cant assessing severity be referred to as a value based judgement? Are you playing semantics?

@AnnalsCNS @WileyNeuro In the vignettes, isn't dying versus not dying a medical difference? It seems to me that the interpretation that the difference in proportions is solely "value/based" is flawed.

A new questionnaire‐based experimental study by Niels Lynøe & colleagues indicates that the diagnostic process in suspected #shakenbabysyndrome is more value-based than evidence-based. Read more: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… @WileyNeuro

Thanks to @csgreeley for raising the important issue of selection bias in #AHT and #shakenbabysyndrome. Whist incorporation bias and associated circular reasoning continues to plague the field, it is also crucial to consider selection bias. #junkscience

"Commentary on Witnessing #AbusiveHeadTrauma: Accidents Show Higher Rates of Intracranial Pathologies Than Shaking—Caution Is Warranted" by Christopher Greeley & Jim Anderst and response by @cbabrook: doi.org/10.1002/cns3.7… doi.org/10.1002/cns3.7… #ShakenBabySyndrome @WileyNeuro

@gilham_stuart The "experts" in the UK are responsible for a lot of unscientific literature. Just pornpoor methodology used to try to prove they are right, not trying to do actual science. they are zealots with power to remove children and send people to prison based on unfounded beliefs

@cbabrook I've looked into it a bit. From what I've seen in the UK Waney Squier unjustly had her license to practice revoked for raising objections against it.

Even though MsBP wasn’t a big factor in the trial of Lucy Letby, it’s apparent it was a factor in the Police’s decision to run a narrow minded investigation. Independent survey finds for every 400 allegations, 4 have weight thetimes.com/article/720f66…

@reasonoverfear No. thought she was innocent and still think she is innocent.

@DavidDavisMP Expert reports should also be freely available! Make then open to scrutiny like all science should be! The opaque nature of courts is how they get away with presenting so much junk science. Make it happen!

Transcripts of court trials should be freely available. For a recent major trial, I was initially quoted £100,000 for the transcript! This is a travesty of justice. It must be put right. My question to the Justice Secretary 👇🏻

@Lizziesaurus @BOHInnocence Great book. Shows the evidence as received by the jury and how lay people (and the jury) interpret forensic evidence and assess witnesses. Reading alongside my book enhances understand of our justice system by providing very different viewpoints.. then make make up your own mind

@BOHInnocence @cbabrook Reading This House of Grief by Helen Garner. Some good descriptions. A body of tan water in a paddock- not the business-like square of a farm dam but oval-shaped, feminine, like an elongated tear drop. Amanda Forrester, who had clattered into court in ankle-strap stilettos.

Pleasure to get the opportunity to sit down and speak to Dr Chris Brook ( @cbabrook) to discuss how the criminal justice system often gets science wrong, with a focus on Robert Farquharson and 'shaken baby syndrome'. youtu.be/HDFSq8RQ2sY?si…

@Sunraged @NeilRos55889793 When was the mother asked about this? Why is her memory taken as gospel? She probably just mixed up the time of the mucous (9) and the time of the bleeding (10). Did she have any notes?

Is that it? Is that genuinely what the prosecution has used to create some kind of case against her to argue she murdered this baby? Without having seen this transcript, I debated with someone that there wasn't just a single possible cause of the baby's death that is alleged to be murder. I said that nurses try to calm worried family members like cabin crew on a plane trying to stay as calm as possible during extreme turbulence. Panic serves no one. Every argument about this particular case mentions "she lied about a tube irritating the back of the baby's throat". That's half the story. Lucy Letby said initially, "Don't worry" (the first important omission of any argument of malevolence). The second was subtle but significant. She said, "It'll just be", not "It is". Like a mother saying to a frightened child, "It'll just be the wind," when the child is frightened of strange noises in the house. I didn't see any admission of falsifying records, I even saw LL remark that she had recorded "approximately 10 O'Clock". The word "approximately" has been erased from the conversation, despite it being absolutely crucial in developing a full understanding of what she was trying to communicate. When asked if it was correct that she was at the baby's cot side when the mother walked in and there was blood on the baby's mouth, LL said "from the mother's recollection, yes" (and not from her own recollection). What a shit show.

Prosecutor Nick Johnson in the trial of Lucy Letby used the evidence of Child E's mother to accuse Lucy Letby of falsifying records and lying to cover up her attacks on Child E on 4th August 2015. Attached is a reported transcript of the June 2019 Cheshire Police interview 4 years later when Lucy Letby was first confronted with the mother's account and accused of attacking Child E. Was she lying during the interview?

@RpsAgainstTrump Why do they waste time doing economic analysis. Trump wants to replace income tax with tariffs so that he can pay less income tax. That is all the analysis you need. #AmericaFirst = #TrumpFirst

“The dumbest trade war in history” The WSJ Editorial Board slams Trump’s trade war with Camada and Mexico: “Mr. Trump sometimes sounds as if the U.S. shouldn’t import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home. This is called autarky, and it isn’t the world we live in, or one that we should want to live in, as Mr. Trump may soon find out… None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term. The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals. Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history."

@carovinuesa You just described thousands of shaken baby/abusive head trauma cases. The scope of the #wrongfulconvictions, over decades, dwarfs the post office scandal. Lucy Letby is the tip of the iceberg.

@tee11xy @carovinuesa @Telegraph @sarahknapton Yes misled because she was only given the medical files and she was not told of other peoples suspicions. If she cannot infer anything from the medical files then she cannot infer anything. Basing her opinion on other pepoles suspicions is not expert opinion

@carovinuesa It appears that @Telegraph and @sarahknapton were too hasty in publishing this article. Dr Hawdon has confirmed that she had been misled by hospital boses who were trying to protect Letby google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.…

@carovinuesa Claims she was "misled" because she was not told other doctors suspected Letby. Sums up so much of forensic medicine: they almost never can infer anything from the actual medical findings: they fit their findings to what they are told to find.