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The New York Times has published a guest essay entitled "65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza". The article features three photographs of x-rays showing bullets in the head or neck of three child patients, with this citation:

A photograph of an x-ray of a Gazan child with a bullet in their head. These photographs of X-rays were provided by Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from Aug. 8 to Sept. 5. She said: “I had multiple pediatric patients, mostly under the age of 12, who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. Usually, these were single shots. The patients came in either dead or critical, and died shortly after arriving.”

These are the photos, which some people may find distressing:

X-ray of a child with a bullet in her neck Another x-ray of a child with a bullet in their neck X-ray of a child with a bullet in her head

There's been some suggestion on Twitter that the x-rays are faked in some way. For example, this tweet by "Cheryl E" with 2.3M views:

Hello @afalkhatib I saw your post after seeing the reply from @COLRICHARDKEMP and @AntSpeaks, and then I read the article, twice. As someone who is actually a forensic ballistics specialist, I wanted to respond to your post, and this article, with some facts that will demonstrate just how deliberately dishonest and inaccurate both your post and the article are:

Followed by claims that were this real both the bullet and the child would be more damaged.

Or this tweet by "Vodka & Seledka" with 115K views:

However, what’s even more striking to me, is the sight of the X-ray images attached to the article. I am extremely suspicious of genuineness of these images. Here are my two reasons why.

With similar claims.

There are also tweets suggesting the appearance of the bullet indicates it's been photoshopped in.

Is there any evidence to suggest the x-rays were faked? Alternately, is there any evidence that the x-rays are plausible images of someone who's been shot with a bullet that might be in use in Gaza?

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    I've put the x-rays behind a spoiler tag.
    – James Picone
    Commented Oct 14 at 6:51
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    To summarize the arguments in the tweets, "these don't look real because penetrating 5.56 gunshots do much more damage to the skull". Is there any reason given that this wouldn't be survivorship bias (don't need to spend limited medical resources when you can see brain pieces)?
    – CJR
    Commented Oct 14 at 9:16
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    It seems possible that these children are victims of stray shots. A bullet has a lot of kinetic energy and will travel a long way and still be lethal. The damage from a shot directly aimed at a person a relatively short distance away looks very different from the damage from a much longer distance but the latter can still kill.
    – quarague
    Commented Oct 14 at 9:44
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    Do we have any evidence "Cheryl" (tweet author) is a forensic ballistic specialist? Or even is a human? Otherwise this seems like random non-notables.
    – Owen Reynolds
    Commented Oct 14 at 19:46
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    @OwenReynolds I don't think those posts on Twitter are notable claims by our rules. But the original claim by the NY Times that these are real X-Rays is clearly notable, so it doesn't matter. It does not seem entirely unreasonable to doubt these images, some parts look a bit dubious to me. Doesn't mean they're fake, I don't know anything about interpreting X-rays and what looks like it might be manipulation might be simply a consequence of how this method works.
    – Mad Scientist ♦
    Commented Oct 14 at 21:14

1 Answer 1

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The New York Times in an official corporate statement has stood by this article, saying that:

Following publication, some readers questioned the accuracy of the accounts and the authenticity of three CT images shown. Those criticisms are unfounded.

Times Opinion rigorously edited this guest essay before publication, verifying the accounts and imagery through supporting photographic and video evidence and file metadata. We also vetted the doctors and nurses’ credentials, including that they had traveled to and worked in Gaza as claimed. When questions arose about the veracity of images included in the essay, we did additional work to review our previous findings. We presented the scans to a new round of multiple, independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who attested to the images’ credibility. In addition, we again examined the images’ digital metadata and compared the images to video footage of their corresponding CT scans as well as photographs of the wounds of the three young children.

While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication.

The main attack on this story by the account "Cheryl E" claims to be the work of a "forensic ballistics specialist" for the IDF. According to Israelis on Twitter, Cheryl E is an impostor account who has stolen the identity of a survivor of a 2003 terrorist attack. Her additional claim to be a "forensic ballistics specialist" has only suddenly appeared after many months on Twitter and is disreputable coming from a known identity thief.

"I sent a message directly to that account, saying her story didn't match with the obituaries, but giving her the chance to explain herself, and after that I was blocked. She normally doesn't block and likes to reply people with long threads." (Long Twitter thread)

"She has stolen an identity. She is probably profiting." (Twitter)

The other accounts posting these claims, "Vodka & Seledka" and @AntSpeaks, do not make any claim to expertise and are simply posting words. There is a similar x-ray image of a child's skull in a 2020 Times of Israel story, so the x-ray image is not implausible on its face. I am not a ballistics expert, nor do I have access to the New York Times photos, so I will go with the majority of expert opinion as we currently know it.

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    Thanks for your answer; the historical details about the Cheryl E twitter account are useful. I'll hold off accepting the answer for now because I imagine more details will come out over the next week, but frankly the NYT corporate statement saying that they have photos of the injured children they chose not to publish seems pretty compelling evidence to me; seems very unlikely the NYT would just lie about that or otherwise be mislead.
    – James Picone
    Commented Oct 15 at 22:33
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    I'm a former Navy Corpsman. For a bullet to be lodged in a brain, I would expect to see a few additional items that are missing in the photos. Bone fragments (which show up well on x-rays) would also travel with the bullet into the brain. It's extremely rare but theoretically possible to have them missing, but here's a real example for comparison (NSFW) radrounds.com/radiology-case-images-teaching-file/gunshot-wound Additionally, all of these bullets are well formed, with their points intact. Even at 500m, a 7.62 will have enough velocity +1000m/s to deform.
    – Edwin Buck
    Commented Nov 4 at 10:10
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    It's worth noting that as of now we also have photos of the kids and more videos of the scans: x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1849111044674802142 . As far as I'm concerned it's beyond question that these are real medical images of children with a bullet wound.
    – James Picone
    Commented Nov 5 at 11:09

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