Shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma struggles to find a solid scientific foundation, largely because of a circularity confound, the same diagnostic features under study serve as the basis for categorising cases for research purposes. In an attempt to overcome this circularity, researchers have turned to confessions as a sorting criterion in the research, under the belief that confessions are independent of the diagnostic features and hence not subject to circularity. However, none of the research examines the nature and reliability of the confessions, or the interrogations that produce them; they simply accept the confessions as true, reliable, and independent. Research on interrogations and false confessions, however, along with extensive and wholly consistent anecdotal evidence, strongly suggest that SBS/AHT confessions are largely if not entirely produced by interrogator reliance on the diagnostic findings. That reliance undermines both the independence of the confessions, and hence their ability to break free from circularity, and the reliability of these confessions as a group. On the current state of knowledge, confessions cannot be relied upon to substitute for science to support the SBS/AHT hypothesis.

Chapter 6 deals with the legal and political forces determining the visibility of Israeli state violence against young Palestinians. First, it examines three ways in which Israel subjects Palestinians to its gaze or pressures them to internalize it: putting up threatening posters with photographs of Palestinian youth or their parents; taking pictures of unsuspected Palestinian youth; and soldiers filming their abuse of young Palestinians. Second, this chapter lays bare a range of Israeli practices and discursive techniques operating to conceal, downplay, and legitimize violence against young Palestinians: the prevention of such violence from being witnessed in real time; the destruction of incriminating evidence; restrictions on publishing unflattering information; the failure to record interrogations; torture methods that leave no physical marks; legally sanctioned secrecy; the impunity of alleged perpetrators; and their depiction as merely a few rotten apples. Finally, the chapter offers a rethinking of evidence. Israel and its human rights critics tend to privilege video footage and state agents’ testimonies, thereby validating both Israel’s dismissal of uncorroborated Palestinian allegations and its “rotten apples” narrative. It is argued that alternative types of evidence foreground the representation at work and can thus highlight the invisibility shrouding both state violence and young witnesses.