Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 9. Source pages: 2.
A rumor’s going around. I think it might have started with David White, the LPA Executive Director, who can be totally excused for not knowing the difference between a dual role and a conflict of interest. But then the rumor gained steam, latching on to other motivations, until finally, it was stated with conviction in a letter from Joe Comaty to the Assistant Director of Boards and Commissions, Ms. Robinson.
“One of the candidates currently running has a direct conflict of interest,” Comaty wrote.
Cognitive psychology tells us that an idea catches on because it’s simple, emotional, and because of our automatic, lazy think brain. Shame, shame. Conni Patterson had a dual role, not a conflict of interest, but apparently it is becoming the complaint du jour.
I checked with her about it and turns out she had a very small job with the board to help out on a few investigations. She resigned, and expects any of the very few cases she worked on to be closed very soon, if not now.
But that is not the point. People should check out their “arrows.” Patterson’s primary goal in aiding the board would be the same goal if she were sitting on the board, to help figure out the truth.
“A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest,” write Bernard Lo and Marilyn Field, and the Committee on Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, part of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies.
In our profession, primary interests might include scientific truth, client welfare, or investigation validity. Secondary interests, can include financial goals, but also and more diabolically, psychological goals such as status, power, or even protection of group identity.
Patterson had a dual role, not a conflict of interest, and a simple analysis shows us we would not expect a conflict of goals in this situation. (By the way, most board members have dual roles.)
In his letter to Boards and Commissions, Dr. Comaty said that Patterson would have to recuse herself and this would impair the board’s performance.
Recuse onself? Does he mean like recusing oneself after searching one’s conscience and finding that a personal goal conflicts with a primary goal?
Like in 2009 when the psychology board, made up of LAMP-Political Action Committee members, made a decision to sit by and do nothing while their own legislation was being passed, legislation that diluted the psychology practice act? Like that? The way no one recused themselves?
Or in 2012, when Comaty was approached by representatives of medicine and medical psychology to change his decision, so that psychology interns could be supervised by professionals without a state psychology license? That way? The way he didn’t recuse himself?
Or, in 2012 when LPA sent Phil Griffin to ask the psychology board if they’d discuss ways to bring psychology back from the medical board, and they said they were happy with things the way they were. The way the medical psychologists (MPs) on the board didn’t recuse themselves. That way?
Or how the board decided that in the case of MPs, it was okay that continuing education was delivered by a Political Action Committee, just don’t do it again. That way?
There is no more clear evidence that MPs have different goals in regard to independent clinical psychologists, than the current collaboration clause for counselors (and soon to be marriage and family therapists) where MPs will be collaborating with counselors for clients who have a serious mental illness, but clinical psychologists will not.
In December 2010, pushed by then Executive Director Jaime Monic, the board asked the Attorney General to answer a question, “Is there a conflict of interest when a psychologist is a member of the Psychology Board and is simultaneously licensed as a medical psychologist with Medical Examiners Board?”
The Attorney General’s office said all they could rule on was dual-office holding. But then they said the propriety of a public board member’s conduct is governed by Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics, and gave them the address and the phone number and wrote, “We further recommend that you seek an advisory opinion from the State Board of Ethics on this issue.”
But no one ever did. Go figure.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.