Psychopathy Could Use a Little Skepticism

"Psychopathy Could Use a Little Skepticism." AJOB Neuroscience, 4(2), pp. 14–15

Notes

Problems with replicating results are not limited to psychopathy or even psychology: A recent examination of published research found that purportedly significant results often melt away in meta-analyses (Ioannidis 2005).

While this label was used in various psychological reports, no witness ever used this term in court. I never learned why, but perhaps the state witnesses adhered to the recent admonition that “the present research suggests that criminal justice language and conceptualization should be modified and should stop talking about individuals as being ‘psychopaths’” (Guay et al. 2007, 709).