Carole Wade
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that dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) is widespread,when it is actually extremely rare, most cases being the probable result of media
sensationalism and therapist suggestion (Lilienfeld & Lynn, 2003; Piper & Merskey,
2004; Rieber, 2006).
And this is just a partial list.
Many clinical techniques have become widely used without having first been subjected
to the first rule of research: comparison with a control group. And even when good research
finds a technique to be useless, seemingly driving a stake through its heart, the technique,
vampire-like, may refuse to stay put in its coffin because of a lack of critical thinking on the
part of practitioners or their clients. An example is facilitated communication (FC), which
involves placing autistic or mentally impaired children in front of a keyboard while an adult
places a hand over the child’s hand or forearm. Proponents claim that children who have
never used words before are, with the help of FC, able to peck out complete sentences. Yet
two decades of research have shown that what happens in facilitated communication is
what happens when a medium guides a person’s hand over a Ouija board to help the person
receive “messages” from a “spirit”: The person doing the “facilitating” is unconsciously
nudging the other person’s hand in the desired direction (Mostert, 2001; Wegner, Fuller, &
Sparrlow, 2003). A recent German review of the literature concluded that FC “has failed to
show clinical validity, shows some features of pseudoscience, and bears severe risks of detri-
mental side effects” (Probst, 2005, p. 43). Nonetheless, FC is still very much in use, and
thousands of parents continue to waste their time and money on an unvalidated therapy.
Unreliable and unsubstantiated clinical techniques or assumptions have serious reper-
cussions. If you believe that children always lie, you will fail to investigate their claims, and
children will be returned to parents who physically and sexually assault them. If you believe
that children never lie, you will take some of their fanciful imaginings as truth, and inno-
cent parents and daycare workers will go to jail—as indeed, hundreds have. If you are a
client who does not know the most effective treatment for a problem causing you anxiety
or unhappiness, you can waste money and time on a therapy that will not help you—and
if you are a therapist, you will not be serving your client. Pseudoscientific beliefs about the
cycle of abuse have denied some parents custody of their children on the grounds that they
will inevitably abuse their own children one day, even when there is no evidence that they
would ever do so. Educational policies devoted to improving children’s self-esteem take
away resources from programs devoted to teaching them how to read, write, and think—
skills that build true self-efficacy.
Barriers to Critical Thought in Psychological Science
Lest the reader think I am singling out psychological practice for special scrutiny, let me
note that recent developments within scientific psychology also call out for greater critical
thought by both teachers and students. I am thinking especially about the biotechnical
revolution, and the use of new technologies such as PET scans and fMRI to study that
most mysterious and enigmatic of human organs, the brain.