Article archive / February 1, 2016
Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 2. Source pages: 2.
How Much is $5,000,000? by J. Nelson
The Military Psychologists, Division 19 of the American Psychological Association, did their own investigations of the accuracy and quality of the Hoffman Report, and came up with a long list of criticisms.
Buried in the list the military guys objected to the fees they say are now being paid to Hoffman. They say that the initial deal was to be $400,000, then that went up to $800,000, and now it has soared to $5,000,000.
If true, this confirms that indeed, Mr. Hoffman is a member of the cultural group we call “lawyers.”
I have sympathy for the psychologists in APA who probably did try to shape the fee-seeking behavior of Mr. Hoffman. No chance without major rehab.
A man phones a lawyer and asks, "How much would you charge for just answering three simple questions?” The lawyer replies, "A thousand dollars.” The man exclaims, “A thousand dollars! That's very expensive isn't it?" The lawyer nods, “It certainly is, now what’s your third question?”
These lawyer jokes are funny because most of us know they are true. I’ve actually had an attorney charge me for my phone call asking to set up a phone conference. Then, when I pointed this out, they charged me for that phone call also.
And of course all of us have had the experience of trying to shape a lawyer’s fee into some type of lump-sum payment. Can’t be done, even with applied behavior analysis. I’ve tried framing with, “I want one hour of your time, only.” I go for my hour, and then get the bill for three hours, because he had to think about something or other.
I’ve had to deal with an attorney who encouraged me to stiff the health care people, after a sibling died, but at the same time, tried to pad his own fees. What is the difference between a lawyer and a leech? When you’re dead, the leech stops sucking your blood.
What are we going to do? Sue the attorney?
After complaining in an editorial a few years ago, about the psychology board hiding behind the false issue of attorney-client privilege, a reader sent me her favorite joke––99% give the rest a bad name.
There’s even a joke about lawyer jokes: How many lawyer jokes are there? Three. The rest are true.
What accounts for this universal feeling about attorneys––other than the paradoxical work role of being charged with protecting moral justice and at the very same time being encouraged to obscure and bend the truth?
It’s their culture.
I had the honor of reporting on some of what Dr. Bonnie Nastasi has worked on in the area of helping children in other cultures. I enjoyed her views and principles and found them comfortingly close to much of my work in organizations, where culture and subgroup culture is very important.
So I have to wonder why APA leaders felt the need to hire a Chicago lawyer with political aspirations, to deal with bitter and entrenched subgroup differences that were obviously chronic and unresolved, and which Hoffman and his team clearly did not understand.
Even a bad organizational psychologist could have done a much better job for them, because psychological problems require psychological theory, and appropriate diagnoses and interventions.
We need to start using psychologists and just say no to attorneys. It’s hard, because they’re everywhere––in government, in politics, in the courts. They’re all over the hallowed halls of democracy. A slip-type observation by Sandra Day O'Connor says it ––"There is no shortage of lawyers in Washington, DC. In fact, there may be more lawyers than people."
It looks like Hoffman has proved that he is a lawyer, by charging $5,000,0000. (And there wasn’t a single frequency table or 2X2 in his report.)
How much money is $5M? At an hourly fee of $100, $5M is 50,000 man-hours, or 1,250 weeks of full-time work, or 24 years. Rounding for someone making $100K per year, it’s 50 years.
You can split it up between professionals, assistants, helpers, –– anyway you want, the figure is still absurd.
If APA has a mission to promote the science and practice of psychology, I hope they’ll start at home.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.