Washington is buzzing this week about Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a new “tell all” book from columnist Michael Wolff. Credit the author, his publisher and the many detractors of the President for the massive amount of publicity this tome has generated. Early reports indicated DC-area bookstores being sold out within minutes.
The response from many quarters has made the publication something of a Rorschach inkblot, with individuals being free to project their feelings about the President right onto the book. Such projections have resulted in behavior that would ordinarily strike objective folks as, well, curious.
For starters, the author provides a lead-in to his opus wherein he candidly cautions the reader that he can’t even vouch for what he’s written. It might strike the casual observer as somewhat strange that such a seasoned writer can’t clearly explain what is fact and what is fiction. In his own book.
According to Business Insider, “The book itself, reviewed by Business Insider from a copy acquired prior to publication, is not always clear about what level of confidence the author has in any particular assertion. Lengthy, private conversations are reported verbatim, as are difficult-to-ascertain details like what somebody was thinking or how they felt.” In more lucid times. these findings would seriously undermine the credibility of the author.
Next, within hours of the release of Fire and Fury, countless outlets not typically disposed to rise to the President’s defense would unearth numerous factual errors. If the book is rife with such easily-verifiable errors, perhaps that would give one pause before wholeheartedly accepting some of its more salacious claims? Not in some quarters. Even reviewers who admit that the author used “sleight of hand” and reckless tricks still go on to tell us that “this stuff is too good not to believe it.”
Such is the usual hyper-partisan environment in which we’ve found ourselves for years. And “hit pieces” on Presidents are not only tolerated, but expected. We’re hardly breaking new ground.
One area where we are breaking some new ground is the serious and expanding discussion as to the mental health of our sitting President. This has now devolved to a point where a faculty member in the area of psychiatric medicine at one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the U.S. is having discussions with international media about the “dangerousness” and “mental instability” of the President.
This, despite longstanding and clear guidance from the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association that such public statements are unethical. The former group described this phenomenon as “alarming and an embarrassment” for the psychiatric profession. Still, it hasn’t stopped members of these professional communities from discarding this guidance and making many inappropriate public statements. Even some professionals cautioning against flippant diagnoses have made public statements that seem to walk the reader through the process of diagnosis.
Many of the very same folks who roundly condemn conservatives as “anti-science” have given their unqualified support to these “armchair diagnoses.” These same voices correctly skewered then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) and Senator Tom Coburn (R-Tennessee) for making “Diagnoses-by-TV” with Terry Schiavo and Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, respectively.
Here are some easy beginning guidelines for diagnosing a public figure:
- All diagnoses should be made by qualified professionals with appropriate training and practice;
- All diagnoses should be rooted in appropriate, comprehensive and “in-person” assessments; and
- All diagnoses should secure the informed consent of the individual being assessed.
That’s ethical practice. That’s… science.
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