Well, this has nothing to do with programming and goes way beyond being merely "useless"; yet it might offer some perspective on your question and perhaps help you relativise things.
There's a global industry involving thousands of healthcare professionals, lawyers, judges, police officers, and child protection workers who have spent 50 years prosecuting tens of thousands of parents and caregivers for allegedly shaking their babies. This is based on a theory from the 1970s, which posits that virtually all infants with blood around the brain and at the back of the eyes have been violently shaken. These professionals have developed entire academic journals, conferences, curricula, and training courses to teach this "theory" to all involved professionals (hospital clinicians, police officers, prosecutors, etc.). There are likely hundreds of such courses annually in dozens of countries. These people have raised probably tens of millions of dollars for research and prevention programs against shaking which, while somewhat beneficial for the well-being of babies, have not succeeded in reducing the global incidence of shaken baby syndrome diagnoses.
It turns out this theory is largely incorrect, and only a minority of cases are likely to be actual cases of abuse: the other children suffer from rare diseases or household accidents that cause these types of bleeding, which are mistaken for signs of abuse. Every year, thousands of babies are removed from their homes and hundreds of parents and caregivers are convicted and incarcerated.
This has been known for over 20 years, with more and more professionals raising the alarm, yet the diagnoses continue to be made every day. I discovered this 8 years ago and swore to myself that I would do anything I can to end it. At the time, I met doctors who had been trying to do the same for over 15 years, and here I am, 8 years later, doing everything I can but still feeling quite lonely and helpless. I still hope to think I'm not entirely useless. But more importantly, think about all these professionals who have built an entire industry on false premises, leaving a trail of devastation around the world under the guise of "child protection", convinced they are making the world a better place. Does this fit your definition of "useless"?
Someone I knew was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years after taking his child to the ER. The doc there decided it was "shaken baby syndrome" and called the cops. After that, he was on the guilty-until-proven innocent track. The body was cremated with no second opinion.
He still has three or four years to go. No parole here for "baby killers."
The justice system is filled with all sorts of this stuff, sadly. Claiming they can match a shell to the gun it came out of, blood spatter, etc. My favorite example of this existing at a micro scale is when a professor claimed she could determine age, sex, and race from the footprint of a suspect.
The guy that realized that washing your hand prevents mother and babies from dying in child birth was ignored and he got insane. I dunno what my point is. Maybe that these things are some sort of grind?
He didn't go insane, but the doctors he challenged forcibly had him committed
> In 1865, János Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. On 30 July, Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra lured him, under the pretense of visiting one of Hebra's "new Institutes", to a Viennese insane asylum located in Lazarettgasse. Semmelweis surmised what was happening and tried to leave. He was severely beaten by several guards, secured in a straitjacket, and confined to a darkened cell. Apart from the straitjacket, treatments at the mental institution included dousing with cold water and administering castor oil, a laxative. He died after two weeks
To be clear, it is really a thing. The blood in the brain and behind the eyes can be explained with violent shaking. It's just not the only explanation for those symptoms, and some innocent parents/caregivers have had to suffer due to the system regarding violent shaking as the only cause.
Actually, even the question to know whether the blood in the brain and behind the eyes can be explained with violent shaking (without impact) is debated as the scientific evidence is still lacking. I said "without impact" because the answer is clearly yes when there is an impact -- but there will also be additional markers of trauma in those cases.
So, it's not only to know whether it's the only cause, but even more fundamentally, whether it is a cause.
In any case, one can't really say that SBS is "not a thing", because babies are definitely shaken, and some are injured or die -- there's no debate about that, unfortunately.
I firmly believe that there is no reason to take away a baby from its parents. You can jail the parents if they're convicted of a crime. But without doing that, you can't just separate the child from them.
Yes, there are lawyers who have become experts on these cases and whose tireless work have helped hundreds of people. But that doesn't scale, there are tens of thousands of cases. The real solution will come when doctors fully update their knowledge, which may still take a decade or two.
Is is possible they don't want to update on that? It seems this is all some sadistic plot to make people guilty of invented crimes, I can't see what else it could be at this scale.
Nah, it's just the inertia of a bad idea: and a bad idea with big consequences is one of those things which is really hard for people to change their minds on. Just think, if a doctor who has testified in many of these cases were to understand that they were wrong, it would mean they would know they had contributed to the imprisoning of many innocents. It's not at all an easy task emotionally to come to terms with that, so denial is a very common outcome.
We've had one in French for a while, and we've been wanting to create an English version for years. It's about time we get started on it. Otherwise, there's already https://shakenbaby.science/, which serves as a landing page for a recent book.
There's a global industry involving thousands of healthcare professionals, lawyers, judges, police officers, and child protection workers who have spent 50 years prosecuting tens of thousands of parents and caregivers for allegedly shaking their babies. This is based on a theory from the 1970s, which posits that virtually all infants with blood around the brain and at the back of the eyes have been violently shaken. These professionals have developed entire academic journals, conferences, curricula, and training courses to teach this "theory" to all involved professionals (hospital clinicians, police officers, prosecutors, etc.). There are likely hundreds of such courses annually in dozens of countries. These people have raised probably tens of millions of dollars for research and prevention programs against shaking which, while somewhat beneficial for the well-being of babies, have not succeeded in reducing the global incidence of shaken baby syndrome diagnoses.
It turns out this theory is largely incorrect, and only a minority of cases are likely to be actual cases of abuse: the other children suffer from rare diseases or household accidents that cause these types of bleeding, which are mistaken for signs of abuse. Every year, thousands of babies are removed from their homes and hundreds of parents and caregivers are convicted and incarcerated.
This has been known for over 20 years, with more and more professionals raising the alarm, yet the diagnoses continue to be made every day. I discovered this 8 years ago and swore to myself that I would do anything I can to end it. At the time, I met doctors who had been trying to do the same for over 15 years, and here I am, 8 years later, doing everything I can but still feeling quite lonely and helpless. I still hope to think I'm not entirely useless. But more importantly, think about all these professionals who have built an entire industry on false premises, leaving a trail of devastation around the world under the guise of "child protection", convinced they are making the world a better place. Does this fit your definition of "useless"?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/152483802311516...