• Buddy-buddy syndrome.

• "All evidence is equally good."

• Reward everything--gold and garbage alike.

• Tolerance of feeble inferences (irrelevancies).

• Failure to distinguish between an inclusion test and an exclusion test.

  viz., p(h/d) = 1; p(d/h) = 1, ~d --> ~h
  i.e., a sufficiency vs. a necessariness test

• Failure to distinguish between mere consistency of a sign and differential weight of a sign.
• Ignorance (or repression) of statistical logic.
  • Forgetting Bayes' Theorem.
  • Forgetting about unreliability when interpreting score changes or difference scores.
  • Reliance upon inadequate behavior samples for trait attribution.
  • Inadequate consideration of whether and when the (fact-->fact) linkage is stronger or weaker than the (multiple-fact-->diagnosis-->fact) linkage.
  • Failing to understand probability logic as applied to the single case.
• Inappropriate task specification.
• Asking pointless questions.

  'And therefore?'

• Ambiguity of professional roles.

  Why should we listen to the nurse?

• Some common fallacies.
  • Barnum effect.

    "You often appear outgoing and sociable to people who don't know you well, but you are secretly insecure and shy."

  • Sick-sick fallacy.

    [cf. Kinsey on oral-genital practices.]

  • "Me too" fallacy.

    "Real" hallucination seems to require a special talent, or taint.

  • Uncle George's pancakes fallacy.

    Funny, how long those suckers would last up there in the dry attic. Wonder what their R-value was?

  • Multiple Napoleans fallacy.

    Is it madness to imagine oneself Bill Gates?

  • Crummy criterion fallacy. [3pp.]

    Which was the independent, and which the dependent, variable once again?

  • "Understanding it mkes it normal."

    Surely you can find an example, and post it to the newsgroup.

  • Assumption that content and dynamics explain why this patient is abnormal. [5pp.]

    D = [C-->R]
    p(C)>>p(D)>p(R)
    

  • Hidden decisions.

    The ideal patient: Y.A.V.I.S.

  • The spun-glass theory of the mind.

    Surely you can find an example, and post it to the newsgroup.

  • Identifying the softhearted with the softheaded. [4 pp.]

    Meehlian roulette: two guns, six bullets, one chance

  • Neglect of overlap.

    e.g, the Midwestern Multiphasic Tennis-Ball Projection Test

  • Ad hoc fallacy.
  • "Doing it the hard way."

    Ready to try an actuarial table?

  • Social scientist's anti-nosology bias.

    Have you acquired this? Ready to give it up?

  • Double standard of evidential morals. [8 pp.]

    n Cognizance, n Nurturance

• Anti-nosological bias:
  • "Formal diagnoses are extremely unreliable."
  • "We should be interested in understanding the patient rather than labeling him."

    cf. Rosenhan (1973), Davis (1976, 1979)

  • "Formal diagnoses are prognostically worthless."

    And suicide prediction.

  • "Diagnosis does not help with treatment."

    What about in the case of bipolar illness?

Suggestions for Improvement

We can select, if we have a rather small numner of trainees in a program, applicants falling in the (++) cell of a cognizance-nurturnace fourfold table (Meehl, 1973, p. 283).

"Most people's thoughts..."

cf., cont., organic, 'functional' diseases (see chart, p. 287).

(pseudo)scientific terminology, e.g.

• superego lacunae
• intrapsychic ataxia
• anhedonia

Glossary

• EST: electric shock therapy (cf. ECT), a treatment for psychotic depression consisting in the induction of an epileptoid seizure in the patient by administering an electric charge to the head.
• MMPI: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
• nosology: The science or art of the classification of diseases.
• primum non nocere: Latin, "first, do no harm."
• specific etiology: the necessary (but rarely sufficient) causal factor in the development of a condition, the "differentiating causal agent" (Meehl, 1973, p. 248), e.g., the mutated X-chromosome preventing normal metabolism of phenylalanine in PKU syndrome, pre-pubertal sexual activity in Freud's "seduction theory."