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April 30th, 2025 (Permalink)

Presumed Guilty Syndrome

Jennifer Block, "The Junk Science That Gets Parents Convicted of Murder", The Free Press, 3/17/2025
The Innocence Project has taken up the cause of exonerating Robert Roberson, a man who has spent more than 20 years on death row in Texas―mostly in solitary confinement―for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki.
Gretchen Sween, Roberson's attorney since 2016, took his case after Texas passed a law allowing courts to revisit prosecutions based on "junk science." … If Texas executes Roberson, he will be the first person put to death for a conviction linked to the shaken baby diagnosis.
His case has attracted a high-profile group of supporters… [who] are working to expose how bad forensic science gets so embedded in the medical and criminal justice systems that actual innocence becomes almost impossible to prove. With shaken baby syndrome [SBS], the last adult with the child is essentially presumed guilty.

You're not supposed to have to prove your innocence.
"Over the last two decades, extensive scientific research has discredited SBS," wrote [Barry] Scheck. But "because misinformation and misconceptions about SBS persist, Mr. Roberson is still at risk of execution for a crime that never occurred."

Horrible details of the daughter's illness and death omitted. Read the whole thing at your own risk.
It was research into the potential harms of motor vehicles that led to the shaken baby hypothesis…. British neurosurgeon Norman Guthkelch had read about whiplash experiments on monkeys, which demonstrated that sharp back and forth motion alone could cause brain injury without direct impact. He theorized that caregivers, who shook children in frustration or anger, could cause the same damage.
Of course, when a baby or young child unexpectedly falls unconscious or dies, society rightfully wants to know why. But sometimes there is no obvious cause, no visible injury, no immediate explanation. [SBS] provided one. …

Throat clearing omitted.
In the U.S., John Caffey, a Pennsylvania pediatrician, took Guthkelch's suppositions further and published a template for signs that a baby had been shaken: bleeding between the brain and skull, in the back of the eyes, and swelling in the brain. This "triad," as it is known, was swiftly accepted as definitive and became standard in the worlds of both medicine and criminal justice. …

Detour about the "Satanic panic" omitted.
By then, prosecutions for [SBS] were proving highly effective, frequently winning convictions against the accused. In these cases, typically the defense asks juries to accept that we may never know how or why an infant died. Signs of damage to the brain, juries are told, can have numerous causes, often completely unrelated to abuse. The prosecution, on the other hand, offers certainty. Prosecutors call on expert witnesses―specialists in child abuse―who confidently assert that a child's caregiver delivered mortal damage.
As convictions based on [SBS] rose, so did questions about the reliability of that diagnosis. In 2001, seminal research on playground accidents by a Minnesota forensic pathologist and medical examiner demonstrated that a fall from even a short height, or an object falling on a child, could generate brain swelling and bleeding. The pathologist, John Plunkett, began testifying in court on behalf of defendants accused of [SBS]. As a crime reporter for The Washington Post put it, "Plunkett was now a threat to SBS cases all over the country."
Pediatric radiologists were also raising alarms. Dr. Julie Mack was in practice in the early 2000s in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and had pronounced many shaken baby diagnoses after reviewing CT scans. "In med school everybody was taught" that if you couldn't readily explain the cause of brain swelling and bleeding, "the parents must be hiding something," she told me.
To address her growing doubts about this dogma, she explored the anatomical literature and had a breakthrough. She found that the dura, the membrane between the skull and the brain, can bleed without trauma―resulting in a "subdural hematoma"―one of the supposed key markers of SBS. Mack co-authored a widely cited paper with Dr. Waney Squier, a British neuropathologist who specialized in infant brains.
Squier also dove into the literature and found that subdural hematomas are a common artifact of childbirth. Around half of babies have them and they can last for several months. Furthermore, bleeding in the dura and behind the eyes can be triggered by an infection, a genetic disorder, diabetes, cancer―the list of conditions that share these symptoms is "ever expanding," said Mack.
Squier told me she "became completely convinced there is no good evidence" to support the [SBS] hypothesis. … When Guthkelch came to understand what had been spawned from his original hypothesis, he devoted his retirement to assisting people accused of criminally shaking a baby. Shortly before his death in 2016, he told a journalist: "I am frankly quite disturbed that what I intended as a friendly suggestion for avoiding injury to children has become an excuse for imprisoning innocent parents." …
At Robert Roberson's murder trial in 2003, the jury was told that Nikki's symptoms could point only to one thing: that she'd been violently shaken. … Last September, Roberson's attorney Gretchen Sween filed a petition for clemency that includes several new, exonerating findings. For instance, Nikki had been prescribed a drug that combines an antihistamine and a narcotic. Today the Mayo Clinic warns the medication "is not recommended in children… [Ellipsis in original.] because of the increased risk of respiratory depression." …
Even the detective who helped convict Roberson, Brian Wharton, has since recanted. "Our bedrock accusation, 'Shaken Baby Syndrome' as used in Robert's trial, is junk science," he wrote in a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. "There is no evidence of a crime, much less a capital crime."
On October 17, 2024, Roberson was scheduled to die, but he was saved by a bipartisan group of state legislators who issued a subpoena asking him to testify before them, which led to the Texas Supreme Court delaying his death. There is currently no execution date. But Sween says that could change at any moment.

It's bad enough that Roberson has been in prison for over two decades, but he shouldn't be executed for a possibly non-existent crime.

The following podcast also concerns SBS.
Jerusalem Demsas, "The Scientific Controversy That's Tearing Families Apart", The Atlantic, 3/11/2025

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article and podcast, but I think they're worth reading or listening to as a whole. In abridging the excerpts I may have changed the paragraphing.

April 28th, 2025 (Permalink)

One More Cup of Coffee

During a recent visit to my favorite coffee shop, I noticed that some of the customers put only milk in their coffee, some took only sugar, some used both, and more than one drank their coffee black. In fact, eleven customers took milk and nine took sugar, but three times as many put both milk and sugar in their coffee as drank it black.

How many customers visited the coffee shop while I was there?

Disclaimer: This puzzle is a work of fiction.

April 10th, 2025 (Permalink)

Unauthorized Doublespeak

Last month, I discussed an article that used the phrase "immigrant living in the country without legal permission" as a euphemism for the taboo phrase "illegal immigrant". I also noted that the article tried to explain the meaning of the phrase with an alternative euphemism, namely, "unauthorized"¹.

A dozen years ago, The New York Times (NYT) announced in its pages a change in its style policy regarding the taboo phrase:

The changes announced by Mr. [Philip B.] Corbett to the stylebook suggested caution when looking for alternatives to "illegal immigrant." "'Unauthorized' is also an acceptable description, though it has a bureaucratic tone," Mr. Corbett said. "'Undocumented' is the term preferred by many immigrants and their advocates, but it has a flavor of euphemism and should be approached with caution outside quotations."²

So, "unauthorized" was a possible replacement for "illegal" twelve years ago, at least in the NYT. Moreover, "undocumented" was already becoming outdated, since good doublespeak doesn't have "a flavor of euphemism", and once people are aware that a word is a euphemism it has lost most of its force. When you hear or use a word that you know is a euphemism, you're immediately reminded of what it is a euphemism for, whereas good doublespeak prevents thinking about taboo topics.

According to Google's Ngram Viewer, the phrase "unauthorized immigrant" was practically non-existent before 1980, its use slowly but steadily rose until around the turn of the century, at which point it surged, peaking in 2016 after which it has declined slightly³. However, "undocumented immigrant" is still ahead in the euphemism sweepstakes, though the use of both phrases plateaued in the last several years⁴. Interestingly, despite peaking in 2008 and declining afterward⁵, the taboo phrase "illegal immigrant" still beats both euphemisms⁶, but this is only in books up to 2022, and perhaps books are a lagging indicator. Nonetheless, it is a small sign that the battle for honest language is not lost.

To finish, I have some suggestions for future doublespeak based on the use of "unauthorized" as a euphemism for "illegal":

"thief" = "unauthorized borrower"
"kidnapper" = "unauthorized babysitter"
"rapist" = "unauthorized sex partner"
"murderer" = "unauthorized executioner"

Notes:

21^st Century Doublespeak, Part 3, 3/12/2025.
Christine Haughney, "The Times Shifts on 'Illegal Immigrant,' but Doesn't Ban the Use", The New York Times, 4/23/2013.
"unauthorized immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
"unauthorized immigrant,undocumented immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
"illegal immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.
"unauthorized immigrant,undocumented immigrant,illegal immigrant", Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed: 4/6/2025.

April 5th, 2025 (Permalink)

Pedaling Lies?

In September of 2023, California passed a law raising the state's minimum wage for certain fast food workers to $20 an hour, but it didn't go into effect until just about a year ago, at the beginning of April¹. In a statement from his office in August of that year, Governor Gavin Newsom was quoted as saying about the new minimum wage: "Despite those who pedaled lies about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong.²"

The statement does not identify those who supposedly lied about the new minimum wage, but I doubt that anyone claimed that the raise of a few dollars an hour would actually "doom the industry", so this is an attack upon a straw man³. It's economic common sense that raising the cost of labor is likely to result in fewer employees, fewer hours worked, or higher prices, so some opponents of the raise did argue that it would cause job losses and price increases in fast food restaurants⁴.

However, the statement from the Governor's office claimed that California had added 11K new fast food jobs since the law had taken effect in April of that year, which is evidence that the job loss criticism was mistaken. Since the possibility of higher fast food prices was not addressed in the statement it is, presumably, lost jobs that the critics "lied" about.

There are two things wrong with the statement, one minor and one major. First, the bad news, then the worse.

Pedaled or Peddled?
In the quote attributed to the Governor himself, Newsom accuses some unnamed people of having "pedaled lies". The verb "to pedal" means to operate a bicycle, piano or other machine with pedals⁵. Since lies don't have pedals, "to pedal lies" literally makes no sense and, even figuratively, it's hard to see the point of comparing lies to a bicycle or keyboard instrument.
In comparison, "to peddle" something means to sell it⁶, so that the common idiom "peddling lies" means to, at least metaphorically, "sell" lies. Since "pedal" and "peddle" are pronounced identically, it's no surprise that they are sometimes confused. Moreover, "peddle" is perhaps an unfamiliar enough word that people are unsure how to spell it. I suspect that most confusions of "peddle" and "pedal" come from people having heard the idiom "to peddle lies" but never having seen it spelled out, so that "pedal" is mistakenly substituted for "peddle".
Of the reference books that I usually check, only one lists this pair of words as a confusion to avoid⁷, so it may not be a very common error, but this is not the first time it's happened. Similarly, out of several free online spelling and grammar checkers I tried, only two suggested replacing "pedaled" with "peddled" in the Governor's sentence. In addition to such programs, I also ran it by GPT-4o mini, which responded:
The sentence you provided is generally clear, but it could be improved for clarity and flow. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Punctuation: Consider adding a comma after "workers" for better readability.
2. Clarity: The phrase "those who pedaled lies" could be rephrased to something like "those who spread misinformation" for a more neutral tone.
3. Context: Depending on the audience, it might be helpful to specify what "this" refers to, as it could be unclear without additional context.
Revised example: "Despite those who spread misinformation about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving them wrong."
Overall, the original sentence conveys its message, but these adjustments could enhance its clarity and professionalism.⁸
This is a disappointing answer: the first suggestion is just plain wrong, and not even followed in the revised example. The second suggestion, about clarity, misses the misspelling of "peddled", and I doubt that the Governor would want "a more neutral tone". Finally, the last suggestion is quite correct, but is the result of taking the sentence out of its original context. The revised example corrects the "pedaled" mistake, but appears to have done so by accident.
Let's turn now to the second and more serious problem with the Governor's statement.
Who Peddled Lies?
According to the statistics provided in the Governor's statement, which it attributes to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of fast food jobs in California increased by 11K in the four months after the wage increase went into effect. However, the BLS has since revised those figures and they currently show an increase of only 2.6K jobs, though it's still an increase⁹, so the Governor's argument is weakened but not destroyed.
Four months is a short period of time to judge the effects of such a major change, and it's plausible that it would take longer for the higher wages to lead to layoffs or less hiring. According to the BLS's current figures, in April of last year, the first month during which the higher wage would be in effect, the number of fast food workers in the state was 730K¹⁰. By December, the last month for which complete data is available, the number was down to 713.7K. So, according to the very source that the Governor relied on, the number of jobs lost in the fast food industry in the nine months after the new higher minimum wage was adopted, was 16.3K.
Now, I'm not claiming that all 16K jobs lost were the result of the higher minimum wage, but it's plausible that at least some were. Moreover, the Governor cannot get away with claiming that gaining 11K jobs in the first four months after the raise shows that it did not cost jobs and, at the same time, that 16K fewer jobs after five additional months has nothing to do with the raise.

Update, 4/7/2025: David McRobert e-mailed that he asked Grok about the Governor's sentence, and this was its answer:

Your sentence is clear and mostly well-structured, but there are a few minor adjustments that could improve its flow, precision, and tone. Here are some recommended revisions:
"Pedaled" vs. "Peddled": "Pedaled" refers to riding a bicycle, while "peddled" means to promote or sell (often ideas or goods, sometimes with a negative connotation like hawking falsehoods). It seems "peddled" is the intended word here.
Clarity and Conciseness: The phrase "those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry" could be tightened for smoother reading.
Tone and Style: Depending on your intent, you might adjust the tone slightly for formality or emphasis.
Here are a few revised versions with explanations:
Option 1 (Minor Fix): "Despite those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are once again proving them wrong."
Changes: Fixed "pedaled" to "peddled" and added "once" to "again" for a subtle emphasis on repeated resilience. Added a possessive form to "California's" for consistency.

This is an odd claim since it was already possessive in the original.

Option 2 (Tighter and Smoother): "Despite claims that this would doom the industry, California's economy and workers are again proving the naysayers wrong."
Changes: Simplified "those who peddled lies about how this would doom the industry" to "claims that this would doom the industry" for brevity. Replaced "those who peddled lies" with "naysayers" for a less emotionally charged term.
Option 3 (Stronger Emphasis): "Contrary to the lies peddled about this spelling doom for the industry, California's economy and workers continue to prove skeptics wrong."
Changes: Adjusted phrasing to "contrary to the lies peddled" for variety and emphasis. Replaced "are again proving" with "continue to prove" for a sense of ongoing strength. Used "skeptics" instead of "them" for specificity.
Recommendation: Option 1 keeps your original intent intact with minimal changes, fixing only the typo and slight polish. If you want a punchier or more polished version, Option 2 or 3 might suit better. Which vibe are you aiming for―straightforward, concise, or emphatic? Let me know if you'd like further tweaks!

This is a much better answer than the ChatGPT-4o mini one if a bit long-winded, and it catches the misspelling of "peddled", which was the most important thing. It could learn to avoid providing more help than is asked for or needed.

David adds: "I understand that ChatGPT-4o mini is a less capable model, optimised for speed and efficiency and doesn't perform as well as ChatGPT-4, for example (or Grok, I would imagine). (I just checked ChatGPT-4 and it recognised the pedaled mistake.)"

Update, 4/20/2025: Here's the caption of a photograph, in the London Times no less, just a few days ago: "Michelle Zajko accused the media of pedalling lies about the Zizians"¹. It's since been silently corrected to "peddling"², but I saw it before the correction thanks to Ann Althouse, at whose "blog" I found it. She commented: "Imagine riding lies around like they're some kind of bicycle!³"

It's either a coincidence to see another of these confusions so soon after writing the above entry, or this mistake is more common than I thought. If I see one more of these I'm going to assume, in accordance with Goldfinger's principle⁴, that it's a sign of enemy action.

Notes:

Adam Beam, "New California law raises minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour, among nation's highest", Associated Press, 9/28/2023.
"After raising minimum wage, California has more fast food jobs than ever before", Governor Gavin Newsom, 8/20/2024.
See: Straw Man.
See, for example: Sara Chernikoff, "Fast food chains, workers are bracing for California's minimum wage increase: What to know", USA Today, 3/31/2024.
"Pedal", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/5/2024.
"Peddle", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 4/4/2024.
Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: a Writer's Guide to Getting it Right (2002).
Private chat with GPT-4o mini, 4/4/2025.
"Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject", U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed: 4/4/2025. The BLS appears to classify so-called fast food restaurants as "Limited-Service Restaurants and Other Eating Places", which presumably includes some establishments not affected by the new law.
This was the starting month that the Governor's office used in calculating that 11K fast food jobs had been created in the four months that the new wage had been in effect.

Notes to Update:

Andrea Blanco, "Alleged Zizian 'cult' member: We are not Satan's lapdogs", The Times, 4/16/2025. This is an archived copy of the page which has since been corrected.
Andrea Blanco, "Alleged Zizian 'cult' member: We are not Satan's lapdogs", The Times, 4/16/2025. This is the current, corrected page.
Ann Althouse, "'My friends and I are being described as like Satan's lapdogs, the devil and the Manson family all rolled into one.'", Althouse, 4/17/2025.
See the epigraph from Ian Fleming's novel, Goldfinger (1959): "Goldfinger said, 'Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it's enemy action."'"

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