Nov. 4, 2013

“It’s not a great time for psychology. Diederik A. Stapel, a Dutch social psychologist, has recently confessed to serial fraud. That he gamed the peer review process of his field’s best journals so often and for so long calls into question the quality-control mechanisms of academic psychology. If garbage can pass peer review, as long as it is well-written and well-formatted garbage, then the authority conferred by appearing in peer-reviewed publications would seem to be slight….

“Most work in the psychological and social sciences suffers from a lack of conceptual rigor. It’s a bit sloppy around the edges, and in the middle, too…. It’s as if the precision of the statistical analysis is supposed somehow to compensate for, or help us forget, the imprecision of thought at the foundation of the enterprise.”

– From “Barbara Fredrickson’s Bestselling ‘Positivity’ Is Trashed by a New Study” by Will Wilkinson at the Daily Beast (Aug. 16, 2013)

The contemporary cases Wilkinson cites and the episodes of the day-care ritual-abuse era bear many dissimilarities. But they share all too closely the practitioners’ use of “the precision of the statistical analysis… to compensate for, or help us forget, the imprecision of thought at the foundation of the enterprise.”

Oct. 11, 2015

“Satanism lacks a (Jim) Jones or (David) Koresh. Satanism has no Jonestown, no Waco, no Kool-Aid, no casual point of reference.

“This is because Satanic cults, as imagined in popular culture, do not exist.

“Still, some places across the country – West Memphis, Arkansas; Manhattan Beach, California; Edenton, North Carolina; Austin, Texas – belong to a brotherhood of cities united not by the stunned, silent grief of a tragedy like Waco’s, but by the shame of having left innocent families’ lives in ruin in the fervent pursuit of an imaginary evil….

“The ‘Satanic Panic’ of the 1980s and early ’90s was arguably even more frightening than a typical cult precisely because of this lack of a central figure or place; anybody could have been involved, and nobody was above suspicion….”

– From “Conviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults” by Dan Shewan at Pacific Standard (Oct. 8)

Oct. 2, 2013

“…It’s understandable that this week’s conviction of former day-care center owner Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. in Farmville, N.C., is being hailed as a breakthrough…. The conviction  increases public awareness of child abuse, serves notice that children should be taken seriously when they show signs of abuse, and calls attention to improved methods of handling such prosecutions.

“Since another long and costly child abuse case at a California day-care center nearly a decade ago that ended less conclusively than the one in North Carolina, prosecutors have learned much. They have learned how to question children without prompting them, have developed better investigative methods, and have improved the coordination between different agencies.

“But that’s not enough. Parents need to be more alert to detecting possible child abuse and more careful about picking safe, responsible day care centers. Despite this week’s conviction… it would be wrong and unfair to conclude that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

– From “How to Guard Against Child Abuse” in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City (April 25 1992)

During the era of day-care ritual-abuse allegations, most newspaper editorials managed to maintain at least a modicum of skepticism. Not this one – unless you count the Deseret News’ acknowledging a modicum of doubt “that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

Aug. 20, 2015

“In the mid-1980s, a friend of mine testified on behalf of an elementary-school teacher who had been accused of being a pedophile.

“A child had told his mother that the teacher had taught them about ‘boobies and dicks’ and had drawn a picture on the blackboard that sounded suspiciously to the mother like an image of an ejaculating penis.

“The police had raced to the classroom and confiscated the damning evidence: several copies of ‘Moby-Dick.’ What the teacher had drawn was a whale and its spout.

“Looking back, we can see that the only boobies involved in this case were the adults. But whenever we are in the midst of a moral panic, as we were in the 1980s, we feel that our alarm is reasonable and that punitive solutions are appropriate.

“Dicks? That child knew the word ‘dicks’? Cancel sex ed! Run that teacher out of town!…”

– From “A Very Model Moral Panic” by Carol Tavris in the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 7)