> As other comments have mentioned, if you criticize an organization by choosing bad actors who are members of that organization to criticize the whole organiza

> As other comments have mentioned, if you criticize an organization by choosing bad actors who are members of that organization to criticize the whole organization, few organizations come out looking good. Yes, that's certainly true. But there's one important difference between the APA and scientific organizations -- scientific organizations can be shamed into following the evidence. In psychology, if there's no theory to suit your fancy, you can invent one and gain a following, and your theory doesn't have to pass a reality test or forge a consensus -- indeed, psychology is overflowing with theories in open conflict. Here's an example: those who have very narrow personal focus and/or a lack of interest in relationships, might be described as having (a) Asperger Syndrome, or (b) Grit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome For those who claim the described symptoms prove Asperger's, there has been much recent controversial activity asserting that it's a condition on the Autism spectrum. For those who claim the symptoms prove a person possesses Grit, there are now movements to empower and offer therapy to intensify this trait. But there's no effort to compare these views either to each other or to reality. The described symptoms might represent a treatable mental illness, as the Asperger's advocates assert -- no one knows. They might represent a natural gift, one possessed by many successful people, and might even represent a positive evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment. No one can persuasively argue that view either, for lack of solid evidence, for lack of anything resembling science. Bill Gates probably possesses Grit, and certainly has an Asperger's diagnosis -- assigned by someone who never interviewed him. Albert Einstein, the same. Thomas Jefferson. Many others -- all members of both these opposing schools of thought. In physics, Lee Smolin can criticize string theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics) for (in effect) not really being a theory on the ground that it's untestable, and his views are widely read by people who don't see this as a challenge to physics -- quite the opposite. In psychology, critics have a much more difficult time because nothing is either demonstrably true or false. This is why two sequential chairs of the NIMH (Steve Hyman and Thomas Insel) have criticized their own profession's disregard for science, only to be (so far) shouted down by vested interests within the field. The defense offered by the field's defenders can be concisely summarized -- no one really knows how science is defined, therefore one cannot persuasively describe something as unscientific. Shockingly, this is a view widely held among mental health workers. But this isn't a tenable view among physicists and other workers in scientific fields, who find that science's definition is very clear.