RUNNING COMMENTARY

Battling a storm of controversy

By Raymond D. Fowler, PhD
APA Chief Executive Officer

For the past several months, APA has been the center of a remarkable firestorm. An article on child sexual abuse was published a year ago in Psychological Bulletin (details in the July/August Monitor, page 47). The conclusions of the authors--that most college students who had experienced some form of sexual abuse as children did not seem to have been as seriously affected as one might expect--attracted little attention from other child sexual abuse researchers; no letters, critiques or rebuttals were received by the editor. But after the article was called "good news" on a pro-pedophilia web site, the article attracted the attention of Laura Schlesinger, the nationally syndicated columnist and conservative talk-show host, who spent many hours of air time telling millions of listeners that APA publishes "junk science," that our publication of the article helps to promote child sexual abuse and that it represents an effort by APA to "normalize" pedophilia.

More bad news

Other columnists and radio hosts around the country picked up the cry, and family values advocacy groups and various religious organizations joined the attack, sending out mailings to thousands of their supporters to alert them to the dangers of this article. Every day brought more bad news. We received copies of news articles and syndicated columns from all over the country that uncritically accepted the negative characterization of APA's positions. Tens of millions of Americans were exposed to this negative characterization. In addition to hundreds of letters and e-mails (virtually all negative) we received 27,000 petitions attacking the study and calling on APA to renounce it.

To make matters worse, much worse, the focus moved to the halls of Congress. Majority Whip Tom DeLay participated in a press conference in which the article and APA were severely attacked, and other members of Congress joined in with proposed resolutions that criticized the article and APA. Similar resolutions began to pop up in state legislatures and some were passed. Relationships developed over many years in Congress and state legislatures began to be threatened, and important advocacy agendas lost ground. We faced what would have amounted to a censure of APA by the Congress of the United States--all for publishing a single, rigorously peer-reviewed research article.

Our response

Throughout all of this, we were working hard to put out the fires. The Board of Directors passed a resolution reiterating APA's long record of opposition to child sexual abuse and support for prevention programs. A central office task force of 20 key staff members worked tirelessly to deal with the media, the Congress and the various groups that had targeted us. We wrote letters to all members of the House of Representatives and I had meetings with Mr. DeLay and other members of congress to present APA's positions. These were well received: We were congratulated for our strong opposition to child sexual abuse, and for our response to their genuine concerns. The tide began, slowly, to turn. The resolution, which eventually passed virtually unanimously in both houses of Congress was greatly softened so it did not censure APA, although it continued to attack the article.

In the aftermath of this particular firestorm, we have to ask ourselves what this episode means for APA as a publisher of scientific journals. Should we censor our journals and avoid articles that might cause controversy? Never. However, we have to realize that in the age of Internet, cable and instantly accessible information, our journals no longer speak only to scholars. Anything we publish that is subject to being misinterpreted probably will be. We must work harder to explain psychological research to policy-makers and the public, and to clarify the singular importance of independently edited, peer-reviewed journals in bringing new results, and new interpretations of old results, to the scientific community for reaction and debate.

In addition to being a scientific publisher, APA is actively involved in the policy arena. We take policy positions on the basis of psychological research and advocate for them, so we can't say we are neutral by-standers. This firestorm has vividly shown the power of science in the public debate. Each person in an argument hopes to have science on his side, and many nonscientists are suspicious of science that seems to contradict their beliefs.

If our scientific publications, sometime written in arcane language difficult for nonpsychologists to understand, are likely to be misinterpreted by the public, we have to find ways to explain them or we will pay dearly for their confusion. Psychological research has the potential to inform public policy if the findings are presented in a clear and compelling manner.



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