_________________________________________________________________ VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1 PSYCHNEWS INTERNATIONAL March 1999 -- AN ONLINE PUBLICATION -- _________________________________________________________________ SECTION I: LETTERS 2/2 RESPONSES TO THE ARTICLE "CONTEMPLATING MORAL RESPONSIBILITY" PSYCHNEWS 3(4) -------------------------------------------------------- Note: This section includes readers' responses to Dr. Donald P. Corriveau's article in the PsychNews 3(4), December 1998. It can be accessed at: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/FTP_3_4/PN3_4_C.HTM -------------------------------------------------------- WHAT ARE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES? I have just read the piece on the survey, by Donald P. Corriveau, Ph.D. Is this piece a good example of why some analysts claim that much of what is published as psychology should be considered as exemplars of writing history? (If this piece were based on data broad enough to include all psychologists, one might call it an anthropology. Perhaps one could say, an anthropology of those who respond to surveys on moral issues on the forum known as Psychnews!!!) Would the writer explain to us why this piece would appear on a forum devoted to psychology? What psychological principles are elaborated by this piece? What psychological principles are used to explain the behavior of the respondents to the survey? James C. Mancuso Dept. of Psychology, University at Albany Email: mancusoj@capital.net http://www.crisny.org/not-for-profit/soi =========================================================== BOGUS SURVEY I am a social scientist with 30 years experience and I always feel somewhat embarrassed at these sorts of naive surveys. A good survey uses a sampling methodology which assures a reasonable representation of the population surveyed (and reports in the results how this was accomplished) and specifies clearly the population at which the survey is aimed. This is all part of what is called in sampling statistics, the representation problem. Please, no more bogus surveys which tell us nothing for the logical reasons originally delineated in Occam's Razor ("entia non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."). It seems to me that the whole exercise was an excuse for some kind of moral and psychotherapeutic diatribe on the part of Dr. Corriveau as indicated in the choice of many of his questions. I believe that it is an ethical issue (as part of our social contract with our community) to ask the police to investigate any murder confession. This core issue was not examined by the survey. If the man is actually delusional (and innocent), that also eventually will be revealed and (hopefully) lead to his receiving treatment as an end result of the police investigation. To me this was less a survey and more a manipulative attempt (consciously or unconsciously motivated) by Dr. Corriveau to get us to join him in his moral outrage. Peter L. Nelson, Ph.D. Australia Email: plnelson@csi.com ________________________________________________________________