========
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: NY Times Magazine, Sunday 2/2/97, "Very Preventive Medicine"
From: tbetz@panix.com (Tom Betz)
Date: 2 Feb 1997 22:11:29 -0500


See it for yourself if you can, page 17, NY Times Magazine, Sunday, 2/2/97.

Here's a letter I dashed off to the editors:

To:               letters@nytimes.com
Subject:          Inaccuracies in "Very Preventive Medicine" 

I was disappointed to see the Times (in "Very Preventive Medicine", 
NYT Magazine 2/2/97) accept as a given the Scientology mythology that 
L. Ron Hubbard authored the Oxford Capacity Analysis, and then report
uncritically Dr. Edward Terino's claim that the OCA has credibility as 
a tool for the evaluation of personality.

At various times in its history, Scientology has attributed the OCA's 
authorship variously, first to Mary Sue Hubbard, ex-wife of "Source",
and then (after their divorce) to L. Ron himself; but in fact, the 
Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA) was written by Ray Kemp, a Scientologist 
who was a former merchant seaman with no psychological training. Kemp 
plagiarised the test from Julia Salman's American Capacity Analysis, 
which in turn derives largely from the 1940s Johnson Temperament 
Analysis. (footnote 1) By the way, the name itself is misleading; the 
OCA has no connection with Oxford University.

Neither does Dr. Terino's claim of the OCA being "diabolically accurate",
have any basis in fact.  There is a fairly large body of work demonstrating 
its uselessness as anything but a recruiting tool for use by Scientology 
"body-routers". 

To aid his official enquiry into Scientology in 1971, Sir John Foster
(K.B.E., Q.C., M.P.) asked a group of eminent psychologists to visit 
British Scientology recruiting offices to take the OCA. The Working Party 
was composed of a clinical psychologist, a consultant in psychological 
selection, and a university lecturer in psychology, all members of the 
governing Council of the British Psychological Society (incorporated under 
Royal Charter in 1965) and distinguished experts in their field.

Here is a portion of the summary of Foster's report: (footnote 2)

    It should be noted that the Oxford Capacity Analysis is not
    a personality test known in psychological circles; it is not
    distributed by reputable test agencies in this country; there
    is no research literature available about it, nor is it
    listed in the Mental Measurements Year Book which is
    internationally accepted as the authoritative source on
    psychometric devices. While any one of these points does not
    in itself indict a psychometric instrument, the failure of
    the Oxford Capacity Analysis to meet all of them does, in our
    opinion, constitute an extremely strong case for assuming it
    to be a device of no worth. The scientific value and useful
    nature of the profile apparently derived from completion of
    the Oxford Capacity Analysis must consequently be negligible.
    We are of the opinion that the Oxford Capacity Analysis and
    the profiles derived from its completion are constructed in
    such a manner as to give the appearance of being adequate
    psychometric devices, whereas, in fact, they totally fail to
    meet the normally accepted criteria. 

    Taking the procedure as a whole, one is forced to the
    conclusion that the Oxford Capacity Analysis is not a genuine
    personality test; certainly the results as presented bear no
    relation to any known methods of assessing personality or of
    scaling test scores. The booklet itself might produce genuine
    scores but these are not the scores presented on the profile.
    The legend 'produced and edited by the Staff of the Hubbard
    Association of Scientologists International' which appears on
    the cover is totally inappropriate to a personality measure -
    such an instrument is not 'edited', it is developed through
    painstaking research. The validity of the OCA booklet itself
    is therefore in doubt. 

Oh, and with regard to Dr. Terino's admitted "poor marketing abilities" 
-- I hear that Scientology can help you with that.  (footnote 3)


(1) Jon Atack's essays "Possible origins for Dianetics and Scientology", 
available at ,
and "The Total Freedom Trap", available at 
.

(2) Sir John G. Foster, K.B.E., Q.C., M.P., "Report of the Enquiry into 
the Practice and Effects of Scientology", by Published by Her Majesty's 
Stationery Office, London, December 1971, available at 
.

(3) Chris Owen, "L. Ron Hubbard's Guide to Ambulance Chasing, part 2", 
available at .

-- 
|We have tried ignorance       |      Tom Betz       (914) 375-1510            |
|for a very long time, and     | Want to send me email? First, read this page: |
|it's time we tried education. |  |
| |   I mock up my reactive mind twice daily.     |