Sunday, February 3, 2008

Disappointing Errors in Serious Books

Disappointing Errors in Serious Books

Irving B. Weiner, Donald K. Freedheim, John A. Schinka, Wayne F. Velicer, Michela Gallagher, Randy Joe Nelson, Alice F. Healy, Robert W. Proctor, Theodore Millon, Richard M. Lerner, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Jayanthi Mistry, William Michael Reynolds, Gloria E. Miller, Handbook of Psychology (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 434, tells us that because of a shortage of mental health care being received by mental patients::
In 1968 the Lanterman Petris Short Bill was passed by Congress to address this concern....
How many errors can you get in a single sentence? Let's rewrite this to match the facts:
In 1967 the Lanterman-Petris-Short bill was passed by the California legislature...
And LPS wasn't passed by to address the shortage of mental health care at all. It was passed to institute a more exacting due process requirement for commitment, thus emptying the state mental hospitals. The net effect was not to improve provision of mental health care, but to move those who were hospitalized back into the community--where for the most part, they ended up living on the streets, and not getting mental health care.

I am just flabbergasted that what is apparently a serious standard work could have an error this gross. On the same page, they refer to 1957 Short-Doyle Act, and recognize that this was passed by the California legislature. You would think that the presence of Short's name in both acts might have caused someone to ask some questions.

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