Document 153LN6KGp5LX2E56M8VaG3aqq

FILE NAME Insulation Contractors & Distributors ICD DATE 2008 DOC CD011 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Unpublished Presentation from Conference DocumeAn lbert 2 t 0Dos cum Subject Fwd Re What AOEC is teaching about mold injuries From Barry Castleman barry.castleman@gmail.com Date Tue 11 Mar 2008 19:48:59 -0400 To Albert Donnay adonnay@jhu.edu Albert please add att Pensacola to ins distributors and contractors file hope you are managing OK Barry in Subject Re What AOEC is teaching about mold injuries From Joeladou@aol.com Date Tue 11 Mar 2008 17:39:23 EDT To undisclosed In a message dated 3/11/2008 1:26:36 P.M. Mountain Standard Time SNK 1955 writes Subj What AOEC is REALLY teaching about mold injuries Date 3/11/2008 12:43:16 P.M. Mountain Standard Time From SNK 1955 To dxd9@case.edu Hi Dr. Dearborn UCLA gave a mold seminar the week before last in conjunction with the physicians of the PEHSU UC Irvine This is the second annual physician education seminar they have given complete with a mock mold trial I have the educational material from this seminar in which physicians are provided CME for attending and being educated While the UConn report is mentioned So are the teaching of ACOEM as two of the presenters were peer reviews for this doc Harber and Fedoruk Also TAUGHT to the physicians were the teaching of Paul Lees Haley This document was in the seminar file http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/toxicmold.html As was the word crap in several of the professional educational power point presentations The funding disclosures and conflicts of interest disclosures are quite interesting to say the least I know there are great members of AOEC who really are working to advance the understanding of these illnesses But you have some really bad apples in the leadership of this org and as a result we are GOVERNMENT FUNDINGFUNDING litigation defense argument being taught to the physicians of AOEC and PEHSU not founded in sound scientific principles 1 of 5 3/24/2008 4:52 PM NOT HAPPY WR Sharon Who is Lees Haley See below Documents PERSONALITY CHECK Malingerer Test Roils Personal Law Fake Bad Scale Bars Real Victims Its Critics Cantend By DAVID ARMSTRONG March 5 2008 Page 11 A test designed to expose fakers is roiling the field of personal law distressing plaintiffs and strengthening the hand of employers and insurers The Focus A test called the Fake Bad Scale is meant to spot litigants who may be feigning their injuries Gaining Credibility Use in personal suits has grown since test part respected became of Personality Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Controversy Some psychologists and plaintiffs lawyers protest test identifies too many real victims as possible fakers Proponents hail the false test as a valid way to identify people feigning pain psychological symptoms or other ills to collect a payout In hundreds of cases expert witnesses have testified that the test provided evidence that plaintiffs were lying about their injuries just as suggested by the test's colorful name the Fake Bad Scale Use of the scale surged last year after publishers of one of the world's most venerable personality tests the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory endorsed the Fake Bad Scale and made it an official subset of the MMPI According to a survey by St. Louis University the Fake Bad Scale has been used by 75 of neuropsychologists who regularly appear in court as expert witnesses ON THE TEST There seems to be a lump my |" --- htt psychologists But now some say th- e test is branding as liars too many people who have genuine Once a week or oftener I suddenly feel hot all over for no real reason I have a great deal of stomach trouble discriminates against women too In May an American Psychological Association panel said there appeared to be a lack of good research supporting the test In two Florida court cases last year state judges before allowing the test to be cited held special hearings on whether it was valid enough to be used as courtroom evidence Both judges ended up barring it Virtually everyone is a malingerer according to this scale says a leading critic James Butcher a retired University of Minnesota psychologist who has published research faulting the Fake Bad Scale This is great for insurance companies but not great for people * The test asks a person to answer true or false to 43 statements such as My sleep is fitful and disturbed and " have nightmares every few nights Someone who suffers from say traumatic stress disorder might legitimately answer true to these questions But doing so would earn the taker two points toward the total of 23 or so that marks a person as a possible malingerer James Butcher Other test statements are " have very few headaches and " have few or no pains These are false someone who has chronic headaches would say Again those replies would incur two more points toward a possible assessment as a malingerer About a third of the questions relate to physical symptoms there are questions about stress sleep disturbance and low energy There is also a batch of questions related to denial of bad behavior For instance those who answer false to " do not always tell the truth get a point toward malingering Measuring Process 2 of 5 3/24/2008 4:52 PM Documze vann-t >ettingss ettings Albert My ZUIJOCUM Paul Haley the psychologist who created the test say that while individual items can be made to seem like evidence for a flawed measuring process what's important is the total score He says the scale has been tested empirically and shown to be effective Dr. Haley says criticism is being orchestrated by plaintiffs lawyers One Dorothy Clay Sims in Ocala Fla has written guides for other plaintiffs lawyers on how to challenge the Fake Bad test She is leading an effort to reverse the decision that incorporated it into the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory which is used in diagnosing and treating patients at mental facilities and in screening people for sensitive jobs like law enforcement , Paul i Haley ! Dr. Haley himself once testified frequently for plaintiffs in personal lawsuits but about 18 years ago he began to work mainly for the defense side He says he devised his test because he saw so many claimants he believed to be faking mental or other distress and existing tests didn't spot them Working for litigants is Dr. Haley's main source of income He has said in court cases that 95 of this work is on behalf of the defense He charges 3,500 to evaluate a claimant and 600 an hour for depositions and court appearances his fee schedule says Dr. Haley didn't dream up the 43 false statements in the Fake Bad Scale He picked them from among the more than 500 false statements in the elaborate decades MMPI He tested responses to the 43 questions on three groups One was personal litigants he said | were malingering A second group was people he asked to answer as if they were trying to fake emotional distress resulting from a car accident toxic exposure or employment A third group consisted of litigants he said had actually been injured The known fakers averaged a score of 27.6 on the Fake Bad Scale those who had been instructed to try to fake emotional distress averaged 25 and the truly injured litigants averaged only 15.7 Dr. Haley wrote in a research report He also compared the scores with those of two large groups who had taken the MMPI both averaged below 20 Dr. Haley concluded that his test appears to be a promising procedure for detecting malingerers and posited that anyone scoring over 20 tended toward fakery He paid to have the results published in a small Montana medical journal Psychological Reports in 1991. Use of his Fake Bad Scale in litigation slowly grew It recently figured in the case of Steven Thompson a onetime truck driver in Iraq for the KBR unit of Halliburton Inc. He said he hadn't been able to hold a job since returning to the U.S. in 2004. Two doctors concluded Mr. Thompson had chronic and fairly severe traumatic stress disorder He filed a disability claim that was denied by the insurer of Halliburton's since KBR unit Mr. Thompson appealed to the U.S. Labor Department which hasjurisdiction in such cases He testified that memories of attacks on his convoys seeing dead bodies and smelling burning flesh led to nightmares and sleeping problems that left him too irritable and difficult to work with to hold a job A psychiatrist hired by the defense John D. Griffith of Houston concluded Mr. Thompson was exaggerating his symptoms and cited his score of 32 on the Fake Bad Scale A Labor Department administrative judge denied Mr. Thompson's claim citing the test results along with inconsistencies in his testimony Mr. Thompson is appealing Dr. Griffith won't discuss the case but says the Fake Bad Scale is helpful in confirming fakers who he estimates make up 40 of personal plaintiffs In seven prior cases where Dr. Griffith worked for KBR or its insurer he found five of the claimants to be malingering court records show Asked about the high percentage of Iraq truck drivers he found to be faking he said When you come back to the States you suddenly discover if you are sick you can make more money than if you were working Cutoff Score Dr. Butcher and some other researchers published a report critical of the Fake Bad Scale in 2003. They looked at more than 20,000 people including several thousand psychiatric inpatients who had taken the MMPI and calculated their Fake Bad Scale scores by checking their replies to the scale's 43 questions More than 45 of psychiatric inpatients had Fake Bad Scale scores of 20 or more meaning they were possible fakers under Dr. Haley's original cutoff score Using a higher cutoff score 24 the researchers still found that 23 of people were flagged as possible malingerers In every subgroup women had much higher scores than men The authors argued it was unlikely that so many psychiatric inpatients could or would have fooled doctors into diagnosing and admitting them to hospitals It concluded that the Fake Bad Scale generated an unacceptably high rate of false verdicts of malingering and also that it was biased against women Says Dr. Haley One of Dr. Butcher's primary strategies for criticizing the FBS is to apply it to groups for which it was never intended and then complain that it isn't appropriate Of course not The FBS was designed for personal claimants 3 of5 3/24/2008 4:52 PM Documents 20Docum In 2006 the publishers of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory took a look at the Fake Bad Scale Those who take the MMPI receive scores on various categories such as paranoia depression and social introversion The question was whether to make the Fake Bad Scale one of these scored categories as well The University of Minnesota Press convened a panel of eight experts and pointed to two published reports for them to consider One was a book chapter partly written by Dr. Haley himself The other report was a review of existing research concluding that the preponderance of the current literature supports the use of the test in litigation The review of existing research ended up looking at 19 studies at least 10 of which had been done by Dr. Haley or other psychologists who do work for insurance companies The review had excluded 21 other studies from consideration including the negative analysis by Dr Butcher's team Dr Butcher a member of the advisory panel opposed adding scores of the Fake Bad Scale to the results that are reported when a person takes the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Six of the eight panelists approved although they differed on how the test should be used and what cutoff scores were appropriate The University of Minnesota Press then did make the Fake Bad Scale a subset of the MMPI A few months later the American Psychological Association's committee on disabilities protested to the publisher that it had acted prematurely The APA committee later said it hadn't evaluated the test itself but noted that the test was controversial and said Any test that over predicts malingering in persons with disabilities may result in their being denied necessary and due compensation benefits or treatment The committee asked the MMPI publisher to have the Fake Bad Scale reviewed by a group at the University of Nebraska that specializes in evaluating psychological tests The University of Minnesota Press didn't respond to a call But in a letter to Ms. Sims the Florida plaintiffs lawyer a lawyer for the university said it recognizes that the FBS is the subject of significant debate in the academic and professional community The University believes that the process leading up to the FBS release was sound Courtroom Test The experts disagreement spilled over into the courtroom in a case brought against a Florida gasoline carrier Strawberry Petroleum Inc Lloyd Davidson was sitting at a stoplight in May 2004 when his pickup was ended by one of the gasoline company's loaded tanker trucks sending the pickup crashing into another truck ahead of him His lawsuit said his head shattered the rear window and he ended up with diminished mental capacity and symptoms of depression and Inattention A psychologist hired by the defense said in a deposition there was reason to believe Mr. Davidson was faking The witness cited his very high score of 31 on the Fake Bad Scale Before the expert could testify at the trial held in Hillsborough County Circuit Court the plaintiffs moved for a hearing on the scientific validity of the Fake Bad Scale Judge Sam Pendino ruled in June that there is a genuine controversy surrounding use of this test and no hard medical science to support the use of this scale to predict truthfulness He said a that drawing conclusions from test that gives points for malingering when a plaintiff gives honest answers to questions " based on actual injuries has no place in this courtroom In January a jury determined that Mr. Davidson had suffered a permanent injury from the crash and awarded him 1.4 million from the gasoline carrier Write to David Armstrong at david armstrong@wsj.com armstrong@wsj.com David Armstrong Reporter The Wall Street Journal 10 Post Office Square Suite 715 Boston MA 02109 David Armstrong@Wsj.com 617-654-6705 Office 617-571-2416 Cell 617-654-6711 Fax It's Tax Time Get tips forms and advice on AOL Money of 3/24/2008 4:52 PM