 |
Research
of Famous Harvard Psychologist Seriously
Flawed, Perhaps Fraudulent
Students
at Belmont Hill School Thought It Was a 'Farce'
By
Atty. J. Edward Pawlick
The
research that made Harvard psychologist William Pollack a
famous expert on American boys and frightened American
parents and educators is seriously flawed, if not
fraudulent, according to people familiar with the study. It
became the basis of Pollack's bestseller, Real Boys:
Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. Pollack's
overtly anti-male conclusions were used by Harvard Medical
School in 1998 to declare a "national emergency"
that called for "major social reform" of boys. The
boys at Belmont Hill School who were used by Dr. William
Pollack to conduct the research for his best-selling book
about American boys thought that the survey, which reportedly
employed coercion, was a farce. "No
one around me took the exam seriously with such one-sided and
leading questions being asked," one former pupil says.
"The test turned into a complete farce when kids began
shouting out their answers to their classmates in an effort to
make a joke." One
student still vividly remembers one question that they were
required to answer. "I was asked to answer how often I
thought about killing myself - not if I did - how much I did.
I was given the choice between once a year, once a month, once
a week, or once a day." One parent says the school
refused to provide parents with copies of the "test"
which was administered to their sons. "We
were absolutely shocked when the teachers threateningly
demanded that we sign our names. I feel I can honestly say
that the common sentiment, as a direct result of those
one-sided questions, throughout the entire class was to not
take the test seriously," a student has told
Massachusetts News. It
is a violation of the Ethical Standards of the American
Psychological Association, to force subjects to complete
surveys and to sign their names. Against
universally accepted scientific practice, Pollack has always
refused to reveal where the research was conducted or to allow
other academics to examine the data behind the sweeping and
alarming conclusions he published in Real Boys. But concerned
parents and former pupils have revealed that Pollack's
research was done on May 19, 1997, at the prestigious Belmont
Hill School just outside Boston. The
boys continued to talk about it for days. "Over the
course of the next few days," a boy says, "it became
a badge of honor to admit that one had filled it out
incorrectly simply to spite this test which, no matter how
accurately answered, in no way reflected the student. As a
result, the student body did not answer accurately and
honestly. I am still outraged and frightened that the answers
I wrote on that test are actually connected to me by name, or
by any means." Because
of fear of retaliation, until the students left Belmont Hill
and had been accepted at colleges, the revelations have until
now been kept from the public. In addition, the boys do not
wish to damage the school in any way. In
the meantime, Pollack a clinical psychologist at Harvard
Medical School, became famous and rich because of his
best-selling book, published in 1998. Is
it Fiction?
Prof.
Howard Schwartz of Oakland University says the new revelations
about Pollack's research confirm what he suspected already. "The
only question is how much of his interviews Pollack made up. I
suspect it was a lot. This information does nothing to reduce
my uneasiness about the standards he applies to his work. His
data were collected in a very questionable fashion from an
extremely non-representative sample of boys. It makes the head
spin to think that he has generalized his findings into a full
blown diagnosis of cultural crisis. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to take Dr. Pollack seriously." A
professor of organizational behavior, Professor Schwartz
studies the psychodynamics of political correctness and is
publishing a new book on the subject. He sees Pollack's
underlying goal as "to provide a theoretical basis for
social engineering, for a certain kind of parenting - from a
feminist perspective." "Pollack
sees no particular [positive] meaning in the role of the
father," says Schwartz. "His images of fathers are
just about uniformly negative.
The whole idea behind the revolution in parenting that
he is trying to bring about is [the notion] that the
traditional family is throwing boys into distress by raising
them to be like their fathers rather than like women." Research
Doubted Last Year
Pollack's
research came under attack last year in a book by Prof.
Christina Hoff Sommers, of the American Enterprise Institute.
In The War Against Boys she wrote that we are turning against
boys as the result of research that is "riddled with
errors." "On
June 4, 1998," she wrote, "McLean Hospital, the
psychiatric teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School,
issued a two-page press release announcing the results of a
new study of boys. The release ... reported that researchers
at McLean and Harvard Medical School found that
'psychologically "healthy" middle-class boys' are
anxious, alienated, lonely and isolated - 'despite appearing
outwardly content.'" Sommers
noted that Harvard said that this was a "national
emergency" that had been discovered by Dr. Pollack that
called for "major social reform." She reported that
Harvard said, "The time has come to change the way boys
are raised - in our homes, in our schools and in
society." It's
unusual to find such sensational claims and recommendations
issuing from a staid research institution such as McLean,
which is routinely ranked among the top three psychiatric
hospitals in the United States, Sommers reported. So
Professor Sommers asked to see the research. "I requested
a copy of the 'Listening to Boys' Voices' study from McLean. A
few days later, a thirty-page typed manuscript arrived. It had
not been published, nor was it marked as about to be
published. It had none of the usual properties of a
professional research paper. Unlike most scientific papers,
which alert readers to their limits, Pollack's paper was
unabashedly extravagant, declaring that 'these findings about
boys are unprecedented in the literature of research
psychology.'" The
"national emergency," Sommers discovered, was based
on a "battery of vaguely described tests administered to
150 boys" in grades 7-9. She says Pollack gave no
explanation of how the boys had been selected or whether they
constituted anything like a representative sample. "In
sum," Sommers reported, "Pollack's paper does not
present a single persuasive piece of evidence for a national
boy crisis. I do not know whether 'Listening to Boys' Voices'
has been submitted for publication in a professional journal.
Its sparse data and its strident and implausible conclusions
render it un-publishable as a scholarly article." When
Pollack's former subjects now realize how their answers have
been used by Dr. Pollack as a recipe for changing the boys all
across America, they are astonished. "Our
immature attempt at humor four years ago should not be the
benchmark for the 21st century," one told the
Massachusetts News. Pollack
threatened to sue Massachusetts News (but never did) after it
printed a story in the November 2000 issue. A subsequent story
was published in January 2001 with the headline, "Harvard
Professor Joins Feminist Plan to Alter the Nature of
Males." The subhead was, "Dr. William Pollack Became
Famous and Wealthy, Saying Single Mothers are Fine and Boys
Are In Crisis, Just Like Their Fathers." Violated
APA Ethical Standards
Dr.
Pollack will undoubtedly respond to these revelations by
saying that he had permission from the parents to force the
boys to complete the surveys and to sign their names. But this
newspaper has learned that the only "permission"
came as the result of a long, rambling letter about various
topics from Headmaster Richard Melvoin the previous October. Melvoin
wrote on page two of the letter, "Belmont Hill has been
asked to participate in two surveys. One will survey student
attitudes toward violence in the media. The second will study
developmental issues in boys' attitudes and will be overseen
by Dr. William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School faculty
member who has written two books on issues of boys and men in
society. Dr. Pollack has also spoken in front of the faculty
and at the Boys' Schools Coalition Conference. If parents have
any concerns about their sons participating in these surveys,
please let our office know." Pollack's
surveys were administered to all the pupils in grades 7-9 at
the same time in two separate locations at the all-boy school.
The head of the middle school, Deborah Callahan, was in charge
and Pollack was present. Pollack
appears to have violated the American Psychological
Association's Ethical Standard 6.11, (c) through (e), which
states, "When psychologists conduct research with
individuals such as students or subordinates, psychologists
take special care to protect the prospective participants from
adverse consequences of declining or withdrawing from
participation." The
Ethical Standard also says that, "The psychologist must
make an effort to protect such individuals from any adverse
consequences of declining or withdrawing, such as a lowering
of a grade or evaluation, loss of privileges, or any other
negative consequence over which the researcher has some degree
of control." It goes on to state, "Investigators
must obtain participant's clear assent or agreement to
participate." Parents
Concerned
Concern
was expressed by parents about the methods used and the
headmaster wrote a two-page letter to all parents about a week
later. He said that he has seen Pollack as a "strong,
articulate advocate for boys and boys' schools." And in
the next sentence, the Headmaster gave as his basis for this
opinion the following illogical statement: "Indeed,
he is about to testify in California as an expert witness in
an already celebrated case where a young girl seeks to join
the Boy Scouts. Part of why we have allowed him to work at
Belmont Hill is that he has been an outspoken advocate for the
rights and needs of boys."
|
Copyright ©2001 Massachusetts News, Inc. Photocopying and data processing storage of all or any part of this issue may not be made without prior written consent. |
