When experts attack: Killer theories

I've just watched the BBC2 programme Accused, which traced the events on Orkney when some adults were accused of running a ritual abuse paedophilia ring in the 1990s. It is a terrifying example of what happens when "experts" somehow manage to brainwash themselves into believing an alternative sense of reality, and with the wind of authority behind them are able to cause an extraordinary amount of damage.

It strikes me as the same sort of phenomena that saw Sir Roy Meadow causing havoc in our courtrooms, managing to break-up families and help put innocent parents in jail for the cot death of their babies, with little more than his reputation and a home-made wildy inaccurate statistic. His often ill-founded theories haved seeped into the culture of social services and child care and spread world-wide. His theory Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy for instance has seen many innocent mothers being jailed for having sick children. This is not to say that there are not cases where parents induce illness in their children, but that so many parents can be so easily accused of such a rare type of abuse, causing so many miscarriages of justice, shows the all-reaching power a mere theory can have

We see too the same kind of destructive processes of theory - that set professionals off on a path so diverse from reality that they cease being able to recognise it - with ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. An illness that has demonstrable organic causes, that somehow got held hostage in the psychiatric sphere of medicine. The "theory" that this disabling illness is due to an aberrant belief systems (sufferers are ill only because they think they are ill) holds sway amongst the medical profession despite the fact that it is based on arguably flawed studies, and despite the fact that there is a multitude of tests that can be conducted on sufferers that will show up physical abnormalities.

This "aberrant belief" theory has its bases covered, as all good theories do. Wanting medical intervention is designated as a clear sign by this theory that the patient's illness is delusonal. And so in order not to encourage this "false belief" of illness, appropriate medical intervention is denied. Without the appropriate medical intervention the patient, of course, has no way of proving they are really ill. Leaving them vulnerable to accusations that their illness is delusional. A very neat, self-feeding theory.

Theories are a bit like viruses. They can infest whole professions, causing us to be in danger from agencies that are supposed to protect us from harm.

In the case of the Orkney island allegations, the people there were caught victim of the whole Satanic Ritual Abuse fad of that time, that started in America and spread around the world. Never believe that the hysterical witch hunts of previous centuries are not known to us today. It only takes a grain of truth, some influential and persuasive figure-heads, and the right context, and innocent people can very easily find themselves labelled by the authorities and see their lives go into free-fall.