There were trials with witnesses in the day-care-center cases. See Capturing the Friedmans. The police, the prosecutors, and the judge all believed in the ridiculous case.

Suppose a baby in distress. The care giver is frustrated and shakes the baby. The baby dies. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is likely. Care givers are embarrassed or outraged by the violent action. False confession would not be unexpected. False denials would not be unexpected either.

There was a case in Georgia where a father was accused of penetrating his young daughter. He denied the charge; his wife swore that he was with her throughout the night; and the girl said that somebody entered her room through the window and took her out to his car. The officials disregarded these stories. Eventually a man was found who was in the neighborhood at the time of the rape, and DNA showed it was he. This was one of the first DNA cases.

Shaken baby syndrome is not dispositive like DNA, and is subject to biased interpretation (The expert knows that the child died shortly after the shaking.) Rather than being a stretch, it is common sense that ” since there have been things that have later turned out to be false, then anything could be false.”

I don’t see why this is comparable to the scandalous history of repressed memory, though I suppose at a stretch you could say that since there have been things that have later turned out to be false, then anything could be false.

http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2009.1.PEDS093

But make no mistake: shaken baby syndrome is real, and it kills. There is a noisy little wedge of professional “abuse denialists” who will defend even the most clear-cut and egregious cases of child abuse. Junk science and evil careers, I am afraid, may be more prevalent across the aisle.

Another way for corrupt Prosecutors and Junk Science professional witnesses to advance their evil careers and make money, respectively.