I stand my ground in stating that "we" psychologists
still have no business making predictions about what
is best for Elian. Even the statistical predictions
Richard Platt referred to
>superiority of statistical prediction over clinical prediction. Personal
contact might make us more confident in our evaluation of the likely outcome
but it would not necessarily result in a better prediction<
are based on having a certain amount of knowledge
about the situation at hand, and the opinion of those
not privileged to the information can be no better
than a guess - the very thing that statistics hopes
to improve upon.
Could we assert, with statistics behind us, that ANY
child would be better or worse off with ANY parent?
No, of course not. Our assertion would depend on
the facts we know about the child and his/her
personality development, intelligence (retarded? of
normal intelligence? autistic?) and facts we know
of the parent (abusive? alcoholic? mentally ill?).
The more facts we know, at least, the better we
could make a prediction with a certain amount of
statistical certainty.
(All of the above adjectives about the child and
parent, of course, are examples. PLEASE don't
construe these comments to mean that I harbor
these thoughts about Elian or his father. I'm only
using David Cooper's tactic of example for the sake
of making a point.)
So here's my rounded-off conclusion: we don't have
enough facts to spout off a prediction. I find the
continual interviewing of psychologists by the press
on this issue to be an embarrassment to our profession.
Their GUESS is as good as mine (a community psychologist)
or Ron Blue's (a correlation-opponent-process advocate)
or even Louis Schmier's (a historian). But to
continually present these interviewee's opinions as
fact is annoying. The headline of the article I
quoted in my earlier post was:
"Elian's needs unmet, specialists say."
with a subheadline:
"While sides spar, psychologists worry about damage to boy."
Maybe they need to interview Michael Sylvester, who
will tell them HE'S sure the kid will do fine, based,
I guess, on his proven ability to hang onto a liferaft.
Beth Benoit
University of Massachusetts Lowell
