Q&A: Why 40% of us think we're in the top 5%

By Christie Nicholson
www.smartplanet.com
Originally published April 15, 2014

Here are two excerpt:

Since then Dunning has performed many studies on incompetence. And he has uncovered something particularly disturbing: We humans are terrible at self-assessment, often grading ourselves as far more intelligent and capable than we actually are. This widespread inability can lead to negative consequences for management and for recognizing genius.

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Giving feedback especially in the workplace is a very touchy situation, and companies make reviews more touchy by directly connecting it to things like pay raises. There are two reasons people may not be receptive to feedback: One is it’s going to come as a complete surprise to them, because they probably don’t know what their weaknesses are, second is that it’s just a natural human tendency to be defensive.

So, you have to work around that. There are three different things you can do as a manager. The first thing is if you are going to give feedback make sure that it’s about a person’s behavior or their actions. Do not make it about their character or their ability.

The entire article is here.

Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence

Dunning, D., Johnson, K., Ehrlinger, J., and Kruger, J. (2003). Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jun., 2003), pp. 83-87

Abstract

Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.

The entire article is here.

Dangerous Doctors Allowed to Keep Practicing

By Peter Eisler and Barbara Hansen
USA Today
Originally published August 20, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Despite years of criticism, the nation's state medical boards continue to allow thousands of physicians to keep practicing medicine after findings of serious misconduct that puts patients at risk, a USA TODAY investigation shows. Many of the doctors have been barred by hospitals or other medical facilities; hundreds have paid millions of dollars to resolve malpractice claims. Yet their medical licenses — and their ability to inflict harm — remain intact.

The problem isn't universal. Some state boards have responded to complaints and become more transparent and aggressive in policing bad doctors.

But state and federal records still paint a grim picture of a physician oversight system that often is slow to act, quick to excuse problems, and struggling to manage workloads in an era of tight state budgets.

USA TODAY reviewed records from multiple sources, including the public file of the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal repository set up to help medical boards track physicians' license records, malpractice payments, and disciplinary actions imposed by hospitals, HMOs and other institutions that manage doctors. By law, reports must be filed with the Data Bank when any of the nation's 878,000 licensed doctors face "adverse actions" — and the reports are intended to be monitored closely by medical boards.

The entire narrative and video story is here.

Jury awards $16.5 million in State College suit

By Matt Carroll
Centredaily.com

A jury awarded $16.5 million Thursday to a woman who said she was drugged with carbon dioxide and manipulated to believe she was raped by family members at the hands of a former State College psychologist.

Her attorney, Bernard Cantorna, asked the jury to hold Julian Metter, 59, accountable for planting a “horror story” in the woman’s mind while she was drugged with carbon dioxide.

The jurors responded after five hours of deliberation, unanimously ordering Metter to pay what Cantorna said is the largest jury verdict in Centre County history.

“They clearly wanted to send a message that Dr. Metter is a danger to the public and anyone he might attempt to treat,” Cantorna said. “They wanted to make sure anybody and everybody could find this case and make sure he can never do this to anyone again.”

Metter, who had been in practice for 20 years, lost his license to practice psychology in June 2009 when he pleaded guilty to fraudulently billing Medicare, according to the National Council Against Health Fraud.

He was sentenced in February 2011 to serve five months in prison followed by two years probation. Cantorna said Metter is free to continue treating people, just not as a psychologist, after his probation.

When contacted Thursday night, Metter said he was saddened and disappointed by the jury’s decision. He said he will appeal the verdict.

“It was very surprising,” Metter said. “Everyone with me who knows (the woman) and the situation really felt we brought forward a very accurate picture.”

Cantorna said his client was made to believe she was raped at the hands of her family and abused in cultlike rituals by prominent members of the community.

Metter was accused in the civil lawsuit of creating those images and suggesting them as reality while the woman was drugged and in her most vulnerable state.

“He took a woman who never had any history of this and made her relive the most horrific things one could imagine,” Cantorna said Thursday during closing arguments in the six-day civil trial. “He made her live it.”

The lawsuit alleged the woman suffered lasting emotional anguish as a result. It also stated she suffered a brain injury due to repeated exposures to a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen.

The entire story is here.

Here is the civil complaint.

Here is a copy of the Consent Agreement and Order from the PA State Board of Psychology.

Here is Metter on Autism, with his center's "treatments" that fall outside the scope of a psychologist's practice.

My psychoanalyst’s twisted final session

Once a legend in his field, he was clearly losing his grip. Still, why did he have such a hold on me?

By Simon Yisrael Feuerman

Published by Salon.com

It was with some trepidation that I called Dr. M.

I had read his articles in various psychoanalytic journals and heard his name tossed around at conferences and institutes. He was one of the princes of psychoanalysis and supervision, a member of the old school. He knew people who had been analyzed by Freud and was a colleague of some of the last century’s bad/good boys of psychoanalysis – Hyman Spotnitz, Lou Ormont, Ethel Clevans, Phyllis Meadow.

Nineteen years I had been with a previous analyst and supervisor with whom I had an irreparable break. Nineteen years may sound like a long time for most people, but in the rarefied world of New York psychoanalysis, 19 years is merely a beginning.

Finally, I had made the phone call. And now I was at Dr. M’s Upper West Side office for my interview. I had built a practice that was already sizable, but would I rate for his famous supervision group?

I had arrived about 10 minutes early and expected to read in the waiting room until the appointed hour. By tradition, an analyst will open his door precisely at the right time, neither early nor late.

To my surprise, he came out 10 minutes before our appointment time. Anticipating a silent rebuke I quickly said, “I apologize for coming early.”

“I apologize for seeing you early,” he said. “Come in.”

He had a shock of white hair. He was handsome. Looking at him in that dimly lit hallway in the late spring of 2009, I was taken aback. Why, he must be 90 years old, at least. (He was 89.) His body sent my body a message: I am dying. But at the very same time the vigor in his booming voice said something else entirely. It took hold of me. I was confused: While on the one hand he looked as though he might be nearing the end of his life — the office was dusty, his pants were hiked up too high, subtle but telltale signs of a man losing touch — his voice said, “Beginnings!” New life.

He talked, I talked. I talked, he talked. We had a rhythm. He seemed to be building an enthusiastic lather about having me as his newborn as though he were a man of 30 being given a baby to hold outside the delivery room. There was, you could say, a kind of love in the air.

And it made me somewhat uneasy. In fact, I was quite certain that I had made a mistake. I wanted to run away fast. I did not want to be in this man’s group. Perhaps I feared that I would have to face his death and my own here. I wanted to go to a group that promised me everlasting life. I did not want a dying analyst. I was looking for potency, vitality, virility. I had quite a bit myself, but sought it in others too.

As if magically sensing my turmoil, he stood up. “Enough for today,” he barked. “I would like you to join my group, but say in about nine months. Not before.”

I was astonished. Was he a master, I thought, one of these wonder-worker analysts who can read the mind and even ride like a bronco, two wildly opposing winds of thought in a man? Such things were possible in my world. I had great faith in analysts and their mad magic, their alchemy, their abilities to turn lead into gold and ambivalence and even death into life.

The rest of this interesting story is here.