Andrea Dunlop

Neary and the Serial team spent two years on this story.

They were certainly exposed to accurate information about child abuse medicine and abusive head trauma throughout the course of their reporting, even if they chose to disregard it.

Serial even reports on a trip they took to a medical conference on the subject.

She's putting this in the context of how arrogant some of these unnamed people have found Dr. Jensen to be.

And she said, I noticed it at a shaken baby syndrome conference that I attended in Utah last year.

There was an us versus them atmosphere.

Lots of panels devoted to fighting the naysayers, defense attorneys, medical experts who disagree with them, science that questions the validity of shaken baby syndrome.

So I wanted to ask you about the us versus them and the science that questions shaken baby syndrome because shaken baby syndrome is different than Munchausen by proxy, which we've spent so much time on in that we have a lot of data and an extremely broad medical consensus on the science behind abusive head trauma.

So can you just talk us through some of that?

Joseph Scheller is one who comes to mind who just believes that shaking is not a way to cause that brain injury.

Right.

These defense experts are an important piece to dive into because, in fact, these are the second opinions that are actually being advocated for when Neary points to second opinion laws that she posits could be a solution to the professed problem of crusading child abuse pediatricians.

In this context, second opinion does not mean bringing in a fellow child abuse pediatrician who has equal knowledge and expertise, someone like Randy, who provided innumerable second opinions in his role as statewide medical director.

It also doesn't mean bringing in someone like Dr. Jensen, who was the second opinion in Amanda Surinofsky's case.

More likely, it means bringing in someone like Dr. John Galasnik, the expert witness whose findings are excerpted in Amanda's lawsuit.

Dr. Galasnik found Amanda's report that her baby fell, or was tossed, or was pulled, depending on the version, from the bassinet to be completely consistent with medical findings.

The lawsuit claims that Dr. Galasnik concluded that, quote, With the caveat that I obviously don't have the baby's medical records,

I shared the near-death report, which summarizes the injuries, with both Randy and Dr. Sally Smith and asked them if Dr. Golasnik's opinion made any sense with what we know about the story Amanda is presenting and the injuries the child sustained.

The short answer is no.

It's possible for babies to sustain a head injury from a fall, yes, but not the type or severity of the injuries recounted in the near-death report matching Amanda's case.