Dr. Lorandos: - Thank you Dr. Campbell. Im pleased that Dr. Campbell did not check me into the boards as hes fond of doing. My job is to talk to you and to talk to all of the folks out there in continuing education land about Parental Alienation Processes, Parental Alienation Disorder, Parental Alienation Syndrome, Parental Alienation Chopped Liver; I dont care what you call it, and whether or not the concept, in its various forms, is in fact scientific. Im going to draw upon a sense of what science is and describe whether Parental Alienation is scientific because Dr. Bone and I, having survived the New School for Social Research in the 60s and 70s, have a vague sense that we are in fact scientists, and as many of your presenters who are Ph.D.s in psychology and other fields, and psychiatrists, well probably, no doubt, be seen as scientists. We have a sense of what science is and Im particularly amused at all of the folks that say PAS is not scientific because all of them are non-scientists and I find it delightful to have an opportunity to talk about how PAS may be or can be seen as scientific. First Im going to talk about what the main detractors, when people say, unless theres some nasty old trial judge from Oshkosh who doesnt know anything about science whatsoever, and says, Well, you know its just junk-science and I dont think that its got anything to do with anything. Aside from those folks who have little or no education in science, lets talk about the three, first of all were going to talk about the three main detractors that are cited by folks who say PAS is not scientific.
The three main folks whose work is cited when people try to say that Parental Alienation Syndrome is just junk-science are: a law student, a social worker, and a law professor. Unfortunately, people read what they say and think, Oh wow, this is, yeah, oh golly theres real scientific problems with this, and never look underneath what it is that theyre actually saying, what theyre analysis is, or who they really are. Lets start.
One of the articles from back in the 90s thats cited routinely to describe Gardners work as being unscientific was written by a law student who apparently had no background whatsoever in science, and she said that, and she wrote a note, which is a non-peer reviewed student article, published in the law review where she went to school, and she said that Gardner uses a sex abuse legitimacy scale to diagnose Parental Alienation Syndrome and says that Gardners work hadnt been peer reviewed at all. Of course, in order to say that, she had to ignore zillions of peer reviewed articles and work that Gardner did. She went on to say that she attempted to refute Gardners work by saying that Gardner only said that child sexual abuse claims in custody are contrived and never said that they had any legitimacy, and to further her argument she called upon research, by a psychologist social worker. Unfortunately, this is a notable detractor named Kathleen Faller, who well talk about in a minute, but because Sherry had no ability to understand what the quality of scientific review really would look like or how it would be done, she just cited to some other detractor and suggested that therefore her opinions about Gardner should have some weight.
So, unfortunately when we look at Sherrys work in this particular article we see that she thoroughly misunderstands base rate. When we say that, when Sherry says that to suggest that theres a high degree of contrived false allegations in the process of high conflict custody cases like Parental Alienation Syndrome cases, we should certainly understand base rate and realize that theres good research out there to suggest that most allegations, particularly of sexual abuse, tend to be unsubstantiated, tend to be false. Theres a tremendous amount of false allegations out there; thats not to say that sexual abuse doesnt happen. God, its terrible and we would like to send midgets in spandex with chainsaws after the folks that perpetrate sexual abuse on children. Thats my suggestion for reforming the death penalty in the United States, midgets in yellow spandex suits with those Mexican wrestling masks with chainsaws on live television; thatd make a deterrent. And itd probably make an award-winning show. At least itd be better than Dancing with the Stars.