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Shaken baby witness was dishonest about her expertise, finds tribunal

BMJ 2016; 352 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1550 (Published 15 March 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;352:i1550
  1. Clare Dyer
  1. The BMJ

A leading expert witness who gave evidence for parents in alleged “shaken baby” cases was dishonest in acting outside her expertise and in deliberately misrepresenting the research literature, a medical practitioners’ tribunal has ruled.

Waney Squier, a consultant neuropathologist since 1984, changed her opinion on the mechanisms of abusive head trauma after the publication of hypotheses by the clinical neuropathologist Jennian Geddes,1 said the tribunal chair, Michele Codd.

The tribunal found that, in Squier’s written and oral evidence to courts, she was “dogmatic, inflexible, and unreceptive to any other view” and that she “cherry picked” the literature to support her argument …

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