Declaring that someone failed to meet the bar, without first knowing where the bar is, is not evaluation — it is incompetence masquerading as science-based rational judgment.
Anonymous
By Dr. Bob Uttl
On October 19, 2011, Dr. John Braxton Suffield issued a formal report on Ms. T without ever meeting her or speaking with her. In that report, he explicitly agreed with the earlier assessment by Dr. Kin***, stating:
“Dr. Kin***’s summary (page 9), that Ms. T’s overall cognitive skills are average compared to similarly aged Canadians, is correct.”
D. John Braxton Suffield, October 19, 2011
Yet despite confirming that Ms. T was a woman of average intelligence for her age in Canada, Dr. Suffield nevertheless concluded:
“In my opinion, Ms. T is prevented from performing her regular teaching duties, through a combination of the cognitive deficits… and her pre-existing personality traits…”
Dr. John Braxton Suffield, October 19, 2011
Shortly after faxing his October 19, 2011 Report on Ms. T to Ms. Cynthia Stuart, School District No. 5 Southeast Kootenay, Dr. John Braxton Suffield experienced epiphany, called and emailed Ms. Cynthia Stuart, Director of Human Resources, School District No. 5, informing her that he reminded himself of his professional obligations to have “a direct and substantial professional contact with” Ms. T before rendering a professional opinion about her. As the result, Ms. Cynthia Stuart and School District No. 5 kept the delivered October 19, 2011 Report secret for over 6 years, did not provide it it to Ms. T, and disclosed it only once the litigation started. Ms. T was required to see Dr. Suffield on November 30, 2011, so that Dr. Suffield could have that “direct and substantial professional contact with” Ms. T. Once Dr. Suffield met with Ms. T, on December 30, 2011, Dr. Suffield issued another report, nearly verbatim identical to October 19, 2011 Report, and repeated his opinions quoted above (read Epic ethics fail? Dr. J. Braxton Sufield…)
More than a decade later, School District No. 5 called Dr. John Braxton Suffield as an “expert witness.” Clearly, Dr. Suffield was motivated to defend his own original reports and conclusions from 2011 and could not possibly be considered independent.
Under oath, Dr. Suffield admitted that School District No. 5 had provided him with no minimum performance standards whatsoever: no minimum IQ scores, no cutoff scores on any psychological or motor tests, no job description, and no objective criteria for determining whether an elementary teacher could perform her duties. (Full transcript excerpt in the Appendix.)
Key part of the cross-examination proceeded as follows:
QUESTION: Did you receive from School District 5 any minimum or maximum scores that teachers must have on any of these tests or any subtests in order for them to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No. That would be more akin to pre-employment screening or pre-employment assessment. In fitness of duty assessments there is rarely any superimposed external standard.
QUESTION: Did you ask School District 5 for any minimum requirement for Ms. T’s job?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: Did you ask School District 5 for any minimum requirements, any minimum number of IQ points on any intelligence test that Ms. T must have in order to perform her teaching job?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No, this was a fitness for duty assessment, not an employee selection assessment.
QUESTION: Well, whatever it was, you concluded that Ms. T is prevented from performing her teaching duties due to her low intelligence, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: I did.
QUESTION: And at the same time, you did not receive any minimum requirements from School District 5 as to what the minimum intelligence required for Ms. T’s job is, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Oh, that is true.
Cross-Examination of Dr. John Braxton Suffield
How did Dr. John Braxton Suffield reach the conclusion that a Canadian woman of average intelligence had “cognitive deficits” that made her unfit to teach elementary school children?
He did so through some astonishing methodological contortions, including (read Using outdated, obsolete, and irrelevant test data to make disparaging statements about a cleint’s IQ…):
- Comparing Ms. T’s GATB CDN (Nelson, 1986) scores to outdated American USES GATB (USES, 1970) norms (standardized in the 1940s) based on university education students from the 1950s — an elite group when only ~5% of the population attended university and only a small percentage of teachers had university degrees.
- Comparing Ms. T’s WAIS-IV CDN (2008) IQ scores to Pearson Inc. WAIS-IV US (2008) Advanced Clinical Solution demographically (age, sex, race/ethnicity, education) adjusted norms, effectively using different minimum standards for teachers of different ages, sex, races/ethnicities, and education.
- Comparing Ms. T’s modern WAIS-IV CDN (2008) scores to much easier older test scores WAIS (1955), derived from Wonderlic (1992) of some teachers somewhere, making Ms. T artificially appear roughly 20 IQ points less intelligent than she was.
Dr. Suffield appears to have ignored basic psychometric realities:
- Population intelligence has risen substantially over decades (the Flynn Effect).
- Test norms age and must be updated.
- Test norms differ by culture/country and must be culture/country specific.
- Norm-referenced scores show relative position within a group — they do not, by themselves, establish minimum job requirements.
Most fundamentally, without first establishing what the actual minimum cognitive or IQ threshold for the job is, it is impossible to determine whether someone falls below it. School District No. 5 established no such threshold and Dr. Suffield never had one.
Mr. Brent Reimer, Director of Human Resources for School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay), testified that the District had never set minimum scores for any test, had never conducted IQ or personality testing on its teachers, and simply accepted Dr. Suffield’s opinion without question. Even the use of race-, sex-, and age-adjusted norms raised no concerns for him. When asked whether it struck him as odd that a Canadian woman of average intelligence was deemed unfit to teach, Mr. Reimer replied: “No, I never gave it a second thought, honestly.”
Appendix
QUESTION: Just a minute. Now, Dr. Suffield did you receive any minimum required intelligence standards for elementary teachers working in School District 5 to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: So nobody gave you any minimum number of IQ points which elementary school teachers in School District 5 have to have correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No one from school district five gave me that information. But even if they had it, they would not have provided it to me.
QUESTION: Now, did you receive any minimum requirements as to working memory that elementary teachers working for School District 5 have to have to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Working memory?
QUESTION: Yeah, any minimum requirements, any minimum scores on any working memory test that School District 5 elementary school teachers have to have in order to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No, and even if they had such requirements, they would not have provided them to me.
QUESTION: Did you receive any minimum requirements, any minimum scores? On any kind of tests for processing speed that elementary school teachers working for School District 5 have to have to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: School District 5 did not provide any information about information processing speed.
QUESTION: Did School District 5 gave you any minimum requirements as to what level or what minimum scores on perceptual organization tests elementary school teachers have to have to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: Did school district 5 provide you with any minimum or maximum scores on narcissism personality trait?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: Did school district 5 provide you with any minimum or any maximum score on histrionic personality trait that elementary school teachers working for school district 5 have to have?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No. And if they did, that would have been embargoed by the school district’s union.
QUESTION: Did school district 5 provide you with any minimum or maximum scores on any other personality trait that elementary school teachers working for school district 5 have to have to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: Can we please put up a respondent’s book of expert report, page 4? If you can scroll down please.
QUESTION: Now here it says test administered. And it says Beck Depression Inventory, Connors Adult ADHD Rating Scale, Dellis-Kaplan Executive Functioning System, General Aptitude Test Battery, Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test, Milon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Personality Assessment Inventory, State Trait Anger Expression Inventory, State Trait Anxiety Inventory, Test of Memory Malingering, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Wechsler Memory Scale, Wechsler Test of Adult Reading, and Wide-Range Achievement Test Forth Edition. Did the School District 5 provided you with any minimum required scores on any of these tests and any of the subtests which are part of these tests that elementary school teachers working for School District 5 have to have?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Well, to be clear, this is Dr. [Mary] Westcott’s report, not mine, and they did not provide her to my knowledge of such requirements, but in my case, I was barred from seeing anything other than the materials that were provided to me.
QUESTION: That’s not my question. My question is whether you were provided with any minimum scores from School District 5 on any of these tests or any of the subtests?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Of course not.
QUESTION: Now, do you recall that Dr. [Todd] Kettner administered PAI to Ms. T?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: I do.
QUESTION: Were you provided with any minimum or any maximum scores for any scale on PAI that elementary school teachers must have to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No. Now, having said that, if a person presents as having extreme psychopathology, it would have been incumbent on Dr. Kettner to interpret that and indicate that that would be a problem. But no, there were no minimum requirements imposed by the school board SD-5.
QUESTION: If you can look at the page 85 please respondend book of expert reports
MF: Is that a right page Dr. Uttl?
QUESTION: Yes, that’s correct. If you can just scroll a little bit down where it says assessment procedures and measures used. And so these are the measures which Dr. Kin*** used, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Yes
QUESTION: So Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test Fourth Edition, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Connors Continuous Performance Test, Symbol Digit Modalities Test, Rey Complex Figure, California Verbal Learning Test, Wechsler Memory Scale, Dellis Kaplan Executive Functioning System, Wisconsin Cards Sorting Test, Category Test, Finger Tapping Test, and Grooved Pegboard Test, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Correct there’s a few more next page.
QUESTION: Yes, Motor Free Visual Perception Test Third Edition, Word Memory Test, Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory Second Edition, Beck Depression Inventory Second Edition, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Correct
QUESTION: Did you receive from School District 5 any minimum or maximum scores that teachers must have on any of these tests or any subtests in order for them to perform their teaching duties?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No. That would be more akin to preemployment screening or preemployment assessment. In fitness of duty assessments there is rarely any superimposed external standard.
QUESTION: Did you ask School District 5 for any minimum requirement for Ms. T’s job?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No.
QUESTION: Did you ask School District 5 for any minimum requirements, any minimum number of IQ points on any intelligence test that Ms. T must have in order to perform her teaching job?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: No, this was a fitness for duty assessment, not an employee selection assessment.
QUESTION: Well, whatever it was, you concluded that Ms. T is prevented from performing her teaching duties due to her low intelligence, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: I did.
QUESTION: And at the same time, you did not receive any minimum requirements from School District 5 as to what the minimum intelligence required for Ms. T’s job is, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Oh, that is true.
QUESTION: And you did not ask for those minimum requirements in terms of intelligence for Ms. T’s job, correct?
DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD: Had they had them, they would not have been able to provide them.
Cross-Examination of Dr. John Braxton Suffield