I have apocalyptic experience with "experts".

I've worked on shaken baby syndrome for 8 years with hundreds of families, doctors, lawyers, scientists, [1] and the major obstacle we're facing is with the so-called "experts".

They are judicial experts, appointed by courts to indicate whether they believe a baby has been shaken or abused, on the basis of specific intracranial findings (subdural and retinal hemorrhage, mostly). They tend to be extremely affirmative in their opinions, claiming that violent abuse is "absolutely certain", is the only possible cause in the entire universe, even when there are obvious DNA-proven genetic conditions known to cause the exact same findings ("these have nothing to do with it, on the contrary, sick babies are even more abused"). That's what judges need: certainty, and experts give them exactly that. People are going to jail every day because these experts are so affirmative and certain, and everyone in the system literally worships them.

When anyone has any sort of question about SBS, they're referred to them. They are the "experts", they have 30 years of experience, they have diagnosed SBS during their entire careers. Who else would know better?

They teach their theories to the entire child protection and law enforcement professions. They write their own papers, they are editors in the relevant journals and they review all submissions — carefully rejecting every dissenting voice. They attack everyone who tries to bring a bit more nuance to the complicated issue of the medical detection of child abuse, calling them out "denialists" and "revisionists" in public.

So, I'm not at ease with this post, because these (pseudo)-experts have plenty of experience, they are the experts, and yet they are so much worse than serious specialized scientists and physicians who really know what they're talking about (but who are not judicial experts because they are too busy, well, treating patients and contributing to scientific knowledge). These experts have diagnosed SBS hundreds of times for decades, no one in the world has more experience. Yet, I can personally attest that the scientific level of their work is catastrophically bad.

Perhaps the way to conciliate things is with this: "An expert has a track record and has had to face the consequences of their work. Failing is part of what makes an expert: any expert should have stories about how things went wrong."

That's exactly what's missing with SBS and child abuse: there's no feedback loop! The experts could be wrong every single time, accusing innocent parents and caregivers every time, they would never know, except that people would systematically protest their innocence — which, horrifyingly, is actually the case. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic, but protesting one's innocence in these cases is actually so frequent that it has become one of the diagnostic criteria.

Now, they're not wrong every time, but I believe they're more often wrong than right.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

PS: for the anecdote, one of these experts, the top forensic pediatrician in the country, a "child protection champion", is being prosecuted now because a patient has accused her of raping her.