Most experts, self-styled and not a few seeking fame and gain, refer to themselves as “practicing” their science or faux form thereof. What if their brand of practicing is based on an ungrounded belief?

What if more than three decades ago the prestigious Lancet let an attention-seeking nephrology professor publish, without questioning facts, a piece that precludes a fair hearing for desperate or inexperienced (rarely truly abusive) mothers?

What if, to this day, no accepted scientific methodology, no replicated research, no peer review ever has validated the emotive theory of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy? What if, repeatedly and worldwide, MSP was and is elevated to a disease, disorder, diagnosis variously ascribed to numerous fields of medical or mental health, child protection, law enforcement and infinite others?

Suppose the self-appointed researcher, once hailed for his revelation, now claims that his notes for never approved, monitored or consented “research” on a serially ill baby are “shredded”?

If none of the 16 consultants mentioned in “The Hinterlands of Child Abuse” Lancet article (Aug. 13, 1977) stepped forward to support that original article (see http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ViewMyNews&NRWID=1079), should anyone anywhere—particularly self-styled experts writing, speaking, testifying on MSP since the article was written—be trusted?

When the keystone of a mythical motivation theory is an airy fairy tale that nearly always silences a mother’s account but takes her existing children and subsequent newborns from the delivery room; well, who returns the children to their never abusive, neglectful or even worthy-of-suspicion parents when the jig is up?

We know who pays for the errors of a faulty expert’s assurances to the courts. That courts became crucibles in “accepting” MSP without an iota of scientific fact is stunning. As early as 1981 California’s Phillips decision conferred expert status on those who had merely read several articles “about” imagined MSP.

The personal, professional, political and historical implications of permitting any untested and unnatural belief—such as that lurking behind MSP—to creep from one man’s pen to become child protection policy and family fracturing practice are phenomenal.

Oh, yes, expert witnesses can be unreliable. Equally so can be journal editors, judges, prosecutors, child protectors, doctors and nurses and any and everybody who instigates and pushes forward MSP prosecution.

Those who have never checked on the underpinnings of the theory and belatedly decide to actually study the sine qua non two-and-one-half page thought piece will ultimately agree that the world and innocent families have been snookered and far worse..
Surprised readers will find what seems to be a fact-filled piece minus perhaps a single detail verifiable in the journal article that started it all. Will they simply read on when they note the author’s bold assertion that he saltloaded a sick infant to prove his mother caused his health lapses?

Will they wonder why the writer never rechecked the mother’s allegedly salty breastmilk or bothered with DNA testing of the infant and family in the decades-old spirit of Dr. Garrod’s 1902 observation that metabolic disorders appeared to run in UK families?

Before more families are dis-membered by a discredited notion from a imaginative expert, perhaps those who carefully read that Lancet article will admit the obvious: there never has been solid science by the most generous stretch of anyone’s imagination on which to render an “expert opinion” anyway.

Barbara Bryan, USA (BHBryan@aol.com)

Also see: http://www.falseallegation.org