Error rates can be described for Parental Alienation Syndrome diagnosis. Error rates for personality tests can be used to establish the likelihood of PAS, our available error rate of estimations lend themselves readily to rater classification systems, so we could certainly apply an error rate analysis to our predictions or determinations that PAS exist. Or that a particular test gives us information about PAS.
Ok, what about peer review? Well, if we look at scores and scores and scores of published work in the scientific journals on PAS, or we look at the states in America with the Frye test, PAS admissible, or states in America under the Daubert Test, PAS admissible, or provinces in Canada under the Mohan test, PAS admissible. We can certainly say its met peer review. Series of editors, judges, scientific editors, publication of the work, it doesnt mean that it isnt controversial and were not still trying to move the database forward, but certainly concepts of Parental Alienation have met the criterion of peer review. Its been peer reviewed if you look at the work of Dr. Warshak and his statements about PAS, he points to scores and scores and scores of peer review processes about PAS.
Ok, error rate, falsification, peer review, yep, met those, general acceptance. Well, we just said that the Mohan test in Canada finds PAS admissible; the Frye test in the United States finds PAS concepts admissible and PAS under Daubert, heres a Daubert state, Alaska, admissible, Arkansas, admissible, Ohio, admissible, Louisiana, admissible, Wyoming, admissible. Oh ok, well, so it meets the Daubert criteria, it meets the Frye criteria, it meets the Mohan criteria. Ok, well thats another check for, Is PAS scientific?
What about validity? Scientific validity is the extent to which a test or a scale measures what it says its measuring. Are we measuring PAS or are we measuring the Red Wings? Huh? Are we measuring the same thing? Are we measuring PAS or are we predicting how the Maple Leaves are going to do? Huh? I dont know. Weve got to be measuring and talking about what we think were talking about. Thats validity. Concepts like internal validity, construct validity, certainly PAS is a construct. Can we operationally define it; are we clear in agreement about that constructs definition? Do we have external validity; do other people agree? Do we have statistical conclusion validity when we analyze the studies? Well, PAS has gone through that turn, that sort of validity analysis, again and again and again.
Now Klawar and Rivlin were asked to do a study of 700 divorced families for the American Bar Association. They found in 80% of these contested cases alienating processes. They said that there was strong evidence that an alienating parent played a primary role in PAS, that the alienating parents influence was mitigated in cases where the childs time with the target parent was increased. They found 40% of the children developed self-hatred and guilt because they were used as an ally in the war against the rejected parent. Now this was a study from many years ago in 1991 commissioned by the American Bar Association. Reliability, well, its another criterion for the evaluation of whether something is scientific or not is reliability. Has PAS been subject to analysis with respect to reliability? Im sure Dr. Campbell in our legendary battlesHeres an aside.
Dr. Gardner and Dr. Campbell carried on a legendary battle in the journals of science about PAS in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were bombing, you know you got the psychiatrist boom saying, yes it is and its da da da. You got the psychologist, the empiricist, saying, show me your data, nanananana and nananna and sos your old man, and heck with you, and I would talk to Gardner and he would, steam would be coming out of his ears about this fakakta empiricist Dr. Campbell and then Id go and Id talk to Campbell and when he wasnt beating me up he would say, That Gardner, wheres his, thats his database, I havent seen any analysis, dadadadada, so I brought them together and bought them drinks and took them to dinner. And the chairman of the department of decisional sciences from Carnegie Mellon University and the head of the psychiatry law program at the University of Michigan graduate faculty were there, and they were, do dute do dute do dute do dute do dute, and after about three drinks the guys shook hands, hugged each other, and decided that they were a lot closer than they ever thought that they were. Maybe it was the scotch.
In any event, in an interesting study by Rueda, designed to test reliability concepts with respect to Parental Alienation, we find significant concordance among raters that PAS existed.