This is a brief presentation of the evidence from a systematic literature review of the diagnostic accuracy in suspected traumatic shaking. The national and international reaction to this systematic literature review is also addressed, along with rebuttal of the criticism and an interpretation of the hostile reception of the review. We argue that despite the fact that a scientific controversy often includes competing theories about mechanisms, the shaken baby controversy also includes a controversy about correlation knowledge, because its function is to corroborate (or falsify) the applied theories about mechanisms. Moreover, we argue that long personal experience and groupthink within child protection teams have influenced the development of biased gold standards, resulting in turn in circular reasoning: hence most of the shaken baby literature is flawed.