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Judgement requires discernment. Most of the opinions on this case I see here and elsewhere are unwarranted opinions generally without any specific information about this case or information on how mental health or insanity pleas work in general.
It is the same level of zero effort opinion put forth by the women on social media who say that the husband did it "because he just looked like he did it okay." Prettying it up by appealing to anger at doctors for covid or wokeness doesn't change the fact that much of the ink spilled on this is uninformed and is absent any specific or general knowledge.
The number of times I've seen people mix together psychology and psychiatry, or argue that somehow this case was going to excuse women from murder charges because of natural hormone variations is unreal. Very basic misunderstandings of facts should be a sign to step back and ask questions.
I'm not seeing a lot of that.
OK, so maybe everyone's judgment about this trial here is bad, exactly as bad as Clancy's supporters. I don't see anywhere in what I wrote that would conflict with that at all. This doesn't change the fact that it's entirely reasonable to conclude that "expert opinions" in this case is no more valuable than one's own judgment. Whatever lack of discernment that anyone here (or anywhere) has, given the current state of psychology and experts thereof, it'd be entirely reasonable to conclude that those experts' opinions are corrupted or biased or incomplete or just plain wrong to a similar extent, i.e. like any non-expert layman's.
If you reframe this discussion as "I, a person who is not an aerospace engineer, is disagreeing with the findings of aerospace engineers who have no financial incentive and the inventor of the airplane, who happens to be hired by the defense" that is an accurate enough presentation.
It also makes the commentary look stupid.
I don't know what your job is, but imagine you are explaining something about your job and a used car salesman slams in like Kanye and goes ima let you finish but you are totally wrong.
That also sounds pretty stupid, no?
Aren't expert witnesses usually paid?
My initial post mentioned how both expert witnesses and general experts (with no incentive) seem to be mostly lining up in support of the defense's narrative.
This was a shock to me and part of why I changed my view.
Also keep in mind, as mentioned in my linked podcast - you can hire an expert witnesses and pay them and have them generate work product you do not want. It happens.
Resnick absolutely could have seen Clancy, been paid, and been like nah you don't want me to testify. Instead he helped the defense.
From this guy's bio:
"He has provided consultation in many high profile cases including: Jeffrey Dahmer, Susan Smith, Timothy McVeigh, Andrea Yates, Scott Petersen, Brian Mitchell (kidnapper of Elizabeth Smart), Theodore Kaczynski (Unabomber) and Casey Anthony."
There's a reason I'm so pissy on this topic.
I don't doubt Resnick can evaluate whether a woman sitting in front of him was suffering from post-partum psychosis or not, but I'm sceptical he can tell if a woman whose had months to start building an insanity plea legal defense was suffering from post-partum psychosis or just post-partum depression several months ago, based on her testimony alone. I'm not sure anyone has that ability, that's practically mind reading.
If he'd seen Clancy before she killed her children or right afterwards I'd put more weight on his evaluation. As far as I understand the medical professionals that did evaluate her at the time made no indication that she heard voices.
I'd recommend you watch the podcast if you are legitimately interested in hearing the argument and are potential open to having your view changed.
I just listened to the podcast, and they skipped over the point I was making on whether or not it's possible to determine if Clancy really had command hallucinations at the time of the crime. There's actually a comment on the video noting that Dr. Resnick's court opinion seems to contradict his own teachings in other places on determining if a report of command hallucination is malingering or not.
Dr. Fu is probably correct that it's irrelevant for determining guilt vs innocent due to how Massachusetts law is written, so I guess I'm mostly taking issue with the legal criteria, and the psychiatrists that helped to put it in place.
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Which podcast? I scrolled up the conversation but I'm not seeing any links.
Search on YouTube for "Lindsay Clancy Trial: Forensic Psychiatrist Explains Psychosis, Malingering, & Insanity Defense."
No direct link because I remember hearing something about YouTube links showing the account source and I'm too lazy to figure that out.
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What even is the point of a trial (or a defense at a trial) aside from generating the biggest male ICK heard around the world?
What difference does it concretely make to be convicted of having been insane while killing your kids vs not really that insane for somebody who killed their kids?
Do the caretakers of her paraplegic body have a more favorable skin color or?
Wouldn't that mean you just need to get a different one or do you still have to make him testify if you paid for it?
At Resnick's level of prestige he gets to investigate, charge, and ask them if they want his conclusions (with a potential need to get someone else). It's absolutely possible he's gone senile or decided to collect one last case or get some money for his grandkids. It's more likely that he's involved because it's a big case and he found what he found.
In a more normal case you are just as likely to have the witnesses conclusion change the defense's tack as to keep rolling the dice on witnesses until you get what you want.
And yes it's not clear if this is doing that much for Clancy, perhaps her defense sees a way out here, but realistically she's just likely to end up in a different kind of facility (with women's prison probably being better than the psychiatric hospital). Perhaps its safety concerns as she might get murdered in prison. Perhaps its just a desire to clear her name.
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This is a terrible analogy, and I think you're smart enough to know it. Let's use an analogy that's more akin to psychology:
The difference between aerospace engineering and homeopathy/psychology is that the former has loads of empirical evidence and concrete track record of success as detectable and measurable by a layman in everyday life, while the latter 2 not only lack empirical evidence but often go directly against it.
If you want to claim that modern psychology as practiced by modern psychologists has as much credibility as modern aerospace engineering as practiced by modern aerospace engineers, then just say that. That can be an interesting venue of conversation, where people can discuss the various details and specifics of what gives these people credibility or doesn't. But just making some vague statement about "expert opinions" and "assuming" they're wrong (again, no such thing happened) looks like you're just trying to smuggle in a bailey via a motte.
I've banged the drum on this being medicine and psychiatry not psychology half a dozen times.
People who literally cannot define psychosis are saying "she's not psychotic and the result of this is that women will get away with murder because of their periods."
The analogy holds.
Medicine is a significant step down in reliability from aerospace engineering. Psychiatry even more so, again. Not to the level of homeopathy, not to the point where there are no successes, but both fields contain a lot of bad research.
Psychiatry is medicine, and it has the same problems - money and ethical concerns provide significant limitations in research over some scientific disciplines, but the problems are driven by tensions like that and the reality of research dealing with the most complex organism we have access to. Yes it's not pure math, but it's closer to that than homeopathy.
Aerospace as much as anything else has people publishing to avoid perishing and corner cutting because of finances, if we are going to take it that far.
The core difference is ease of verifiability. In aerospace, either the plane flies at the intended speed and fuel economy, or it doesn't. You can just check. And if it works, it'll pretty reliably work almost all the time forever.
Medicine and psychiatry are, as you said, investigating the most complex organism we care about while hogtied by ethical concerns. This makes it much easier to get away with publishing papers that just don't mean anything at all. Who is going to fight through an IRB to check? Will the (n=25) replication attempt even matter? If so, will the results of some general study specify out to any particular individual with their own mix of genes and hormones and enviroments and everything else?
Like I said, there are definite successes. The comparison to homeopathy is unfair.
But so is the comparison to aerospace.
Yeah fair.
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OK, well I see no prospect of any productive conversation with you on this topic, then. I'll only respond to your comments insomuch as to correct what I see as errors for third parties.
I mean I don't know what to say, the posts here involve a lot of demonstrably untrue statements and I've provided a link that provides education so that people can understand the various contexts and their is a large amount of outright refusal.
Assuming information is more incorrect because it comes from someone with information, training, and experience is obvious idiocy, but it does appear to be the stance you are advocating for.
This is false, it's obviously false by looking at this thread, and I'm puzzled as to how you can write this as if it would be taken seriously. Like, it's so transparently dishonest that I don't know what else to say than that you appear to be obviously operating in bad faith, and I would prefer you didn't.
You claimed:
"The difference between aerospace engineering and homeopathy/psychology is that the former has loads of empirical evidence and concrete track record of success as detectable and measurable by a layman in everyday life, while the latter 2 not only lack empirical evidence but often go directly against it."
Again we are talking about psychiatry, not psychology, but both have plenty of incredibly rigorous, replicable, and reliable research and conclusions. As with anything they also have elements of bleeding edge and hobby research that are questionable.
Critical thinking involves using basic investigation to discriminate between things that are questionable and things that have a strong basis.
Instead you try to imply that psychiatry, psychology, and homeopathy are all the same level of reliable.
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