2020-02-22_New_Scientist

10 | New Scientist | 22 February 2020

Psychology

NASA has selected four possible

missions to visit some of our solar

system’s least understood worlds.

The proposals were chosen as part

of the space agency’s lower-cost

Discovery programme.

The first is called IVO (Io Volcano

Observer), a proposed craft that

would make close passes of Jupiter’s

moon Io, the most volcanically

active place in the solar system.

While we know that Io is covered

in massive volcanoes, IVO would

help us figure out where the magma

that supplies those volcanoes

comes from and how they erupt.

The second proposal is Trident,

a plan to fly past Neptune and

its biggest moon Triton. This

planetary satellite is strangely

active – it has icy volcanoes, for

example – despite being far from

the sun and therefore extremely

cold. Trident would look for a

subsurface ocean on Triton and

try to explain the moon’s activity.

The final two missions aim to

explore Venus, the second planet

from the sun. One is DAVINCI+

(Deep Atmosphere Venus

Investigation of Noble gases,

Chemistry, and Imaging Plus).

It aims to send a probe through

the planet’s atmosphere to measure

its composition from top to bottom,

and help us understand whether

Venus ever had surface oceans.

The other is VERITAS (Venus

Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR,

Topography, and Spectroscopy),

which would orbit Venus with

powerful radar instruments to

map the surface and look for active

processes such as plate tectonics.

Each mission will get $3 million

over the next nine months. At the

end of this development period,

one or two of them will be selected

to actually launch. ❚

A THIRD of the psychological

tests used in US court proceedings

aren’t generally accepted by

experts in the field, a study

has found. “A clinician has the

freedom to use whatever tool

they want and it’s the Wild West

out there,” says Tess Neal at

Arizona State University.

Neal’s team looked at the

validity of 364 psychological

assessments commonly used

in US courts. Assessments are

used in a range of circumstances,

from parental custody cases to

determining a person’s sanity.

In a custody case, for instance,

a psychologist might be asked

to assess whether a parent is

responsible enough to care

for their child.

The team compiled the list of

364 tests used in US courts based

on 22 previous surveys of forensic

mental health professionals.

“There’s way more variety out

there than we realised,” says Neal.

When the researchers looked

up the tests in widely accepted

textbooks to assess their scientific

validity, they found that 60 per

cent hadn’t received generally

favourable reviews. And 33 per

cent weren’t broadly accepted by

psychology experts, according to

nine previously published reviews

of the field (Psychological Science in

the Public Interest, doi.org/dmr9).

The most problematic tests

are usually those that are overly

subjective, says Neal. For instance,

the second most common

assessment used in US courts,

according to previous surveys,

was the Rorschach inkblot test,

in which people are asked what

images they see in abstract

patterns. This has been widely

criticised for letting clinicians

interpret responses based on

their own impressions of a

person. “There are questions

about its scientific

underpinnings,” says Neal.

Another problematic

personality test asks people to

complete sentences where only

the first few words are given,

which again is thought to be

too subjective.

No such wide-ranging and

systematic review has been done

in the UK. But Robert Forde, who

has written a book called Bad

Psychology: How forensic

psychology left science behind,

says there are concerns in the UK

too, particularly over decisions

by parole boards, which assess

prisoners on their risk of

reoffending before they can be

released. Parole boards tend to

be influenced by the scores that

psychologists give prisoners on

subjective factors, such as how

much remorse or empathy they

show, he says. “Those factors are

prone to bias.”

In UK Family Court cases,

a 2012 report found that a fifth

of psychologists who gave

evidence weren’t qualified to do

so, on the basis of their submitted

curriculum vitae. One problem is

that while some job titles such as

“forensic psychologist” are legally

protected in the UK, anyone can

call themselves a psychologist.

Even when people are qualified,

they may act as expert witnesses

outside their field of expertise,

says Ruth Tully of Tully Forensic

Psychology, a consultancy firm

based in Nottingham, UK. ❚

“Triton is strangely active,

with icy volcanoes, despite

being far from the sun

and extremely cold”

Space exploration

Clare Wilson

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News

Controversial tests used in court

Missions may go

to solar system’s

strangest moons

Leah Crane

The Rorschach inkblot

test has been widely

criticised

Common psychological assessments used in US court cases may be too subjective