I'm disappointed, I've come to expect you to post citations for your opinions and not cheap attacks on a guy. You have a phd in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, a BS in physics, and your last job was with Cisco/Aironet.
First of all, I have not worked for Cisco/Aironet since 2002. I've held a number of positions since then, including Principal Investigator with the Ballistics Testing Group, Director of Forensic Science at a state university, and consultant with the American Institute of Biological Sciences on matters related to traumatic brain injury.
My physics background is supplemented by the background of my co-author who took a number of classes at Harvard Medical school in route to her degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics. My co-author has served as a research scientist at the Cleveland Clinic and currently serves on the faculty of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
At least the guy has been known to get his hands bloody treating GSW's.
Gary Roberts has a private dental practice in the San Francisco area. You can look him up in the phone book. His experience with GSW's is mainly with maxillofacial wounds and he sees most of his patients long after the shooting event. How does this make him an expert on how well handgun bullets to the chest produce rapid incapacitation?
My co-author and I have seen the immediate results of hundreds of bullet wounds to the chest. The majority of our experience is with deer, but we have conducted careful studies in other species as well and carefully reviewed reams of published literature both in humans and in a number of animal models.
His material usually seems quite well cited, do you have any specific examples of something that look to be of poor quality?
How many papers has Roberts actually published? How many of these papers actually cite data from the shooting of living targets?
Other than a few papers in the defunct WBR, I've only found one paper by Roberts in the scientific literature. In this paper, Roberts and Wolberg wrote:
The absurd claims made in this chapter…regarding the ability of a bullet to remotely stress and shock the central nervous system (CNS) are grossly inaccurate and completely unsupported by any scientific evidence… This pseudoscientific speculation is presented as verified scientific fact, yet allusion to Goransson’s discredited data is the only scientific reference the authors cite to support their unjustified claims...
A thorough review of the scientific literature relating to wound ballistics has failed to identify any valid research papers which demonstrate that projectiles can exert a remote effect on the CNS.
The assertion of Roberts that Goransson’s data [GIK88] has been “discredited” is unsupported. The data of Goransson et al. find substantial support in the work of Suneson et al. [SHS87, SHS88, SHS90a, SHS90b] and Wang et al. [WWZ04]. Roberts and Wolberg fail to cite any articles critical of this work. Roberts and Wolberg simply fail to document their claim that Goransson’s work had been discredited. Usually a negative comment “discrediting” an article would appear in the same journal as the original paper. No such criticism of Goransson et al. appears in J Trauma.
There are a number of peer-reviewed articles that cite Goransson et al. favorably, but none that “discredit” the data. The fact is that the Goransson et al. paper as well as the follow-up studies by Suneson et al. are highly regarded in the trauma community. Other than unsupported comments by Roberts and Fackler, these papers have been cited favorably in a number of papers, including some important papers regarding remote neural effects of blast pressure waves. If the data of Goransson et al. (and Suneson et al.) were "discredited" why would they be cited favorably in the blast literature?
Referring to remote neural effects as “pseudoscientific speculation” is also exaggerated given the reference [GIK88]. The Goransson paper [GIK88] acknowledges that remote effects on the CNS were previously unexplored, but it gives a clear chain of references documenting peripheral nerve damage without a direct hit [LDL45, PGM46] and a paper describing the effect of pressure waves on compound action potentials in nerves [WES82]. It had also been previously documented [TCR82] that projectile wounds to the thigh produced pressure waves in the abdomen.
The Suneson et al. studies [SHS87, SHS88, SHS90a, SHS90b] appear to be the first studies to fully document remote pressure wave effects on the CNS, including both EEG readings, observations of apnea (non-breathing periods), and ultrastructural damage. These papers were published in the Journal of Trauma years before the critique of Roberts and Wolberg. In addition, there were also case studies by Saxon et al. and Taylor et al. regarding remote effects of bullet wounds in the spine. Therefore, the assertion that "a thorough review of the scientific literature" does not find any valid papers supporting remote CNS effects is surprising.
Were Roberts and Wolberg also ignorant of the work of Frank Chamberlin?
Col. Chamberlin described what he called “explosive effects” and “hydraulic reaction” of bullets in tissue [CHA66]:
. . . liquids are put in motion by ‘shock waves’ or hydraulic effects . . . with liquid filled tissues, the effects and destruction of tissues extend in all directions far beyond the wound axis.
Col. Chamberlin recognized that many theories have been advanced in wound ballistics. During World War II, he commanded an 8500 bed hospital center that treated over 67,000 patients during the fourteen months that he operated it. P.O. Ackley estimates that 85% of the patients were suffering from gun shot wounds. Col. Chamberlin spent many hours interviewing patients as to their reactions to bullet wounds. He also conducted many live animal experiments after his tour of duty. On the subject of wound ballistics theories, he wrote:
If I had to pick one of these theories as gospel, I’d still go along with the Hydraulic Reaction of the Body Fluids plus the reactions on the Central Nervous System.
Courtney wrote: "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness" was not supported by published data when it was originally released over 20 years ago
I'm looking through the pdf I have of the document now and I see 44 foot notes. There has to be at least 20 different citations including things from the Journal of Trauma, Di Maio's Gunshot Wounds, a NIJ report, lectures from Doctors from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Fackler's work from the Letterman Army Institute of Research, etc. Are these cited works inaccurate?
There's a difference between citing papers that state opinions and citing papers that support a viewpoint with DATA.
The bottom line in HWFE is the assertion that there are only two mechanisms of tissue disruption, and only one which damages tissue in the case of handgun bullets.
This is the assertion that is not backed up with DATA. In other words, where are the careful published studies (including data) finding a null result for the hypothesis that the volume of damaged tissue increases with kinetic energy transfer? Where are the careful published studies (including data) finding a null result for the hypothesis of remote neural damage? None are cited.
In contrast, at the time HWFE was published, there had been studies published (including data) showing that the mass of damaged tissue increases with kinetic energy transfer as well as published studies showing remote neural effects. The data of Janzon et al., Rybeck et al., Livingstone et al., Tikka et al., Goransson et al., Puckett et al., and the early papers of Suneson et al. were ignored in favor of Fackler's views which remain unsupported by published data.
Michael Courtney
[CHA66] Chamberlin FT, Gun Shot Wounds, in Handbook for Shooters and Reloaders, Vol. II, Ackley PO, ed., Plaza Publishing, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1966.
[GIK88] Göransson AM, Ingvar DH, Kutyna F: Remote Cerebral Effects on EEG in High-Energy Missile Trauma. The Journal of Trauma. 28(1 Supplement):S204-S205; January 1988.
[LDL45] Livingstone WK, Davis EW, Livingstone KE: Delayed recovery in peripheral nerve lesions caused by high velocity wounding. J. Neurosurg., 2: 170, 1945.
[MYR88] Ming L, Yu-Yuan M, Ring-Xiang F, Tian-Shun F: The characteristics of pressure waves generated in the soft target by impact and its contribution to indirect bone fractures. The Journal of Trauma 28(1) Supplement: S104-S109; 1988.
[OBW94] Ordog GJ, Balasubramanian S, Wasserberger J, et al.: Extremity Gunshot Wounds. I. Identification and Treatment of Patients at High Risk of Vascular Injury. The Journal of Trauma 36:358-368; 1994.
[PAT89] Patrick UW: Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness. FBI Firearms Training Unit, Quantico, VA. 1989.
[PGM46] Puckett WO, Grundfest H, McElroy WD, McMillen JH, Damage to peripheral nerves by high velocity missiles without a direct hit. J. Neurosurg., 3: 294, 1946.
[ROW92] Roberts GK, Wolberg EJ: Book Review: Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study. AFTE Journal 24(4):10; 1992.
[SSW82] Saxon M, Snyder HA, Washington HA, Atypical Brown-Sequard syndrome following gunshot wound to the face, Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 40: 299-302, 1982.
[SHA02] Shaw NA: The Neurophysiology of Concussion. Progress in Neurobiology 67:281-344; 2002.
[SHK90] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Kjellström BT, Lycke E, and Seeman T: Pressure Waves by High Energy Missile Impair Respiration of Cultured Dorsal Root Ganglion Cells. The Journal of Trauma 30(4):484-488; 1990.
[SHL89] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Lycke E: Pressure Wave Injuries to Rat Dorsal Cell Ganglion Root Cells in Culture Caused by High Energy Missiles, The Journal of Trauma. 29(1):10-18; 1989.
[SHS87] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Seeman T: Peripheral High-Energy Missile Hits Cause Pressure Changes and Damage to the Nervous System: Experimental Studies on Pigs. The Journal of Trauma. 27(7):782-789; 1987.
[SHS88] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Seeman T: Central and Peripheral Nervous Damage Following High-Energy Missile Wounds in the Thigh. The Journal of Trauma. 28(1 Supplement):S197-S203; January 1988.
[SHS90a] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Seeman T: Pressure Wave Injuries to the Nervous System Caused by High Energy Missile Extremity Impact: Part I. Local and Distant Effects on the Peripheral Nervous System. A Light and Electron Microscopic Study on Pigs. The Journal of Trauma. 30(3):281-294; 1990.
[SHS90b] Suneson A, Hansson HA, Seeman T: Pressure Wave Injuries to the Nervous System Caused by High Energy Missile extremity Impact: Part II. Distant Effects on the Central Nervous System. A Light and Electron Microscopic Study on Pigs. The Journal of Trauma. 30(3):295-306; 1990.
[THG97] Toth Z, Hollrigel G, Gorcs T, and Soltesz I: Instantaneous Perturbation of Dentate Interneuronal Networks by a Pressure Wave Transient Delivered to the Neocortex. The Journal of Neuroscience 17(7);8106-8117; 1997.
[TAG57] Taylor RG, Gleave JRW, Incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, B39:438-450, 1957.
[TCR82] Tikka S, Cederberg A, Rokkanen P: Remote effects of pressure waves in missile trauma: the intra-abdominal pressure changes in anaesthetized pigs wounded in one thigh. Acta Chir. Scand. Suppl. 508: 167-173, 1982.
[WES82] Wehner HD, Sellier K: Compound action potentials in the peripheral nerve induced by shockwaves. Acta Chir. Scand. Suppl. 508: 179, 1982.
[WWZ04] Wang Q, Wang Z, Zhu P, Jiang J: Alterations of the Myelin Basic Protein and Ultrastructure in the Limbic System and the Early Stage of Trauma-Related Stress Disorder in Dogs. The Journal of Trauma. 56(3):604-610; 2004.
