Errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism in scoring and interpreting psychological tests: Minimally competent conduct?

By Dr. Bob Uttl (September 9, 2023)

plagiarize (verb): to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source

merriam-webster.com

On September 15, 2010, Dr. Westcott, from Mandel & Associates Ltd, issued her report on Ms. T (Westcott September 15, 2010 Report). Dr. Westcott’s use, scoring, and interpretation of the General Aptitude Test Battery Canadian Edition (GATB CDN) (Nelson, 1986) is full of errors, and falsehoods, and largely copied verbatim without acknowledgment, that is, plagiarized, from elsewhere, including from a computerized interpretive report.

These errors, falsehoods, and extensive plagiarism strongly suggest that Dr. Westcott was either astonishingly incompetent or intentionally misused, misrepresented, and misinterpreted Ms. T’s GATB CDN scores. Equally astonishingly, Dr. Allan Mandel, President of Mandel & Associates Ltd., Dr. Westcott’s supervisor, claimed that he reviewed Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report and found it “very well reasoned and based on very objective findings”. Even more astonishingly, Dr. Troy Janzen, Complaints Director and Deputy Registrar of the College of Alberta Psychologists, dismissed Ms. T’s complaints against Dr. Mary Westcott, Dr. Allan Mandel, and Dr. J. Braxton Suffield, and, in doing so, found nothing wrong with errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism galore, and the three psychologists’ conduct. Apparently, at least according to Dr. Janzen, the numerous errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism meet the minimum practice standards expected of the College of Alberta Psychologists.

It seems self-evident that failure to correctly score tests, interpreting incorrectly scored tests, making false statements about scores and tests, and plagiarizing one’s interpretation of the incorrectly scored tests is incompetent conduct. In any case, Alberta’s Health Profession Act defines “unprofessional conduct” as follows:

HPA Interpretation
1 (pp) “unprofessional conduct” means one or more of the following, whether or not it is disgraceful or dishonourable:
(i) displaying a lack of knowledge of or lack of skill or judgment in the provision of professional services;
(ii) contravention of this Act, a code of ethics or standards of practice;
(iii) contravention of another enactment that applies to the profession;
…
(xii) conduct that harms the integrity of the regulated profession;

Alberta’s Health Profession Act, Section 1(pp)

Accordingly, under the HPA, unprofessional conduct includes (a) “displaying a lack of knowledge or lack of skills or judgment”, (b) a contravention of the code of ethics, (c) contravention of the standards of practice, and (d) the conduct harming the integrity of the profession. The code of ethics adopted by the College of Alberta Psychologists is the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists (2017) and, prior to that, it was the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists (2000).

Therefore, from the HPA’s perspective, the question is: Is incorrectly scoring a psychological test, making false statements about psychological test scores and tests, and
plagiarizing one’s interpretation of an incorrectly scored tests from elsewhere “displaying a lack of knowledge or lack of skills or judgment”, a contravention of the Standards of Practice, and/or a contravention of the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists?

The key facts, including excerpts from Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report are below. A reader can judge for themselves whether Dr. Wescott’s conduct — errors, falsehoods, and extensive plagiarism in her September 15, 2010 Report — is minimally competent or incompetent conduct.

Dr. Mary Westcott’s description of the GATB CDN is plagiarized and false

Dr. Westcott’s description of the GATB CDN administered to Ms. T. is largely taken verbatim from the description of the GATB as it appeared in Vespa v. Dynes, 2002 ABQB 25 (see para 137), the court’s decision published eight years earlier, in the section summarizing testimony of Dr. Michael Boissevain, Dr. Westcott’s colleague at Mandel and Associates Ltd.

The column on the left shows the description of the GATB in Vespa v. Dynes whereas the column on the right shows Dr. Westcott’s description of the GATB CDN with the copied words printed in blue.

Dr. Westcott did not quote nor cite the source of the copied words in her report and presented them as her own, that is, she plagiarized them.

Critically, Dr. Westcott’s also plagiarized a patently false claim that “The GATB does what very few other tests do: it permits comparison of client characteristics with those of actual workers in specific occupations.” The GATB CDN and the Aptitude Levels reported in the NOC Career Handbook were never normed nor based on any “actual workers in specific occupations.” The NOC Career Handbook plainly says so in the section titled “Purpose of the Career Handbook“:

The Career Handbook is intended for career counselling, development and exploration purposes. ESDC neither condones nor recommends the use of this information for other purposes. The profiles presented here are not appropriate for other uses such as screening applicants for particular positions or determining insurance benefits. The data do not replace the use of criterion-referenced testing to establish performance requirements for work as it occurs in the labour market. There are three major reasons for this limitation:

• The conceptual foundation of the NOC and the Handbook is occupations, not jobs. An occupation is a collection of similar jobs that share some or all of a set of Main Duties. The tasks of specific jobs vary from establishment to establishment.
• The rated information in the Handbook is not based on experimental data collected from representative samples of the employed labour force for the occupations of the NOC [emphasis added].
• Development of the NOC and the Handbook did not include the collection of data on specific working conditions for jobs contained within occupational groups of the NOC.

The Career Handbook, Purpose of the Career Handbook

As it plainly states, the NOC Career Handbook Aptitude Levels were not normed on any “actual workers in specific occupations” and Dr. Westcott’s claim that “The GATB [CDN] … permits comparison of client characteristics with those of actual workers in specific occupations” is patently false.

Dr. Westcott’s description of the Aptitude Levels and the corresponding Standard Scores and percentiles is also substantially false. Dr. Westcott described the five Aptitude Levels as follows:

By convention, an aptitude level of 5 reflects very poor performance, within the bottom 10 percent of the population. An aptitude level of 4 is rated within the 11th to 36th percentile, and is considered to be below average. An aptitude level of 3 is “average”, and reflect performance within the 37th to the 64th percentile. An aptitude level of 2 is above average, and is rated within the 65th to 90th percentile. An aptitude level of 1 reflects performance within the top 10% of the population, and represents exceptional ability. The average range for a standard score for each aptitude is 90 to 110.

Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report, p. 15

The actual Aptitude Levels and corresponding Aptitude Scores and Percentile Ranges are in the table below. For information purposes, corresponding IQ ranges to Aptitude Levels are also listed in the table. Clearly, by definition, the lowest third is not bounded by “36th percentile”, and the upper third is not bounded by 65th percentile.

Aptitude Level (the Career Handbook)	Aptitude Score (M=100, SD=20)	Percentile Range	IQ Range (M=100, SD=15)
1 – The highest 10% of the working population	> 125	90-100	> 119
2 – The upper third, exclusive of the highest 10%	109-125	67-89	107-118
3 — The middle third of the working population	92-108	34-66	94-106
4 — The lowest third, exclusive of the lowest 10%	75-91	11-33	81-93
5 — The lowest 10% of the working population	< 75	10	< 80

Dr. Mary Westcott’s scoring of the GATB CDN is full of errors and falsehoods

An image below summarizing Ms. T’s performance on the GATB CDN is copied from Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report. The text in red corrects Dr. Westcott’s errors and falsehoods. In particular:

• Dr. Westcott falsely stated that the first row of scores were “Aptitude Level”s. In reality, the first row of scores are Standard Scores (also known as Aptitude Scores). Note that the GATB CDN has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation (SD) of 20, and accordingly, the middle 68% of the General Working Population (in 1985) scored between 80 and 120 and the middle 95% scored between 60 and 140. Assuming Dr. Westcott knew that Aptitude Levels were numbers from 1 to 5, she had to know that numbers such as 83, 92, 75, etc. cannot be Aptitude Levels.
• Dr. Westcott falsely stated that the second row of scores were “Standard Score”s. In reality, the second row of scores are Aptitude Levels — numbers ranging from 1 to 5. Again, assuming Dr. Westcott knew that GATB CDN was standardized with the mean of 100 and standard deviation of 20, Dr. Westcott had to know that numbers such as 4, 3, 1 and 5 cannot be Standard Scores but must be Aptitude Levels
• Dr. Westcott falsely stated that Table 5 showed the “Elementary School Teacher Required Aptitudes as listed in the National Occupational Classifications”. In reality, the Career Handbook makes it crystal clear that those numbers — Aptitude Levels — are (a) based on no experimental data whatsoever and (b) “the most frequently occurring levels of aptitudes.” The most frequently occurring levels of aptitudes are also known as a “mode” and they denote where the center of the distribution of aptitudes lies (see any elementary statistics or psychometrics textbook, for example, Kaplan and Saccuzzo (2017)). In symmetrical distributions, the mode is equal to the mean as well as to the median, that is, 50% of examinees score below the mode, mean, or median.
• Dr. Westcott falsely stated that Table 5 row 3 showed “Standard Score” for each aptitude. These numbers are in fact Aptitude Levels and not Standard Scores.
• Dr. Westcott falsely stated in her report that “In order to provide a wider range of vocational possibilities for Ms. T, one standard error of measurement [SEM] was added to her obtained aptitude scores.” (p. 15). In fact, Dr. Westcott did not add 1 SEM as an examination of her clinical file plainly shows. The numbers in red show what the scores and levels should have been if Dr. Westcott actually added “one standard error of measurement” as she falsely said she did and as the manual advised her to do. The Standard Scores with 1 SEM added are substantially different (due to the GATB CDN’s large SEMs), resulting in Aptitude Level changes on four out of nine aptitudes, and resulting in substantial changes in corresponding percentiles.

Notably, in her response to Ms.T’s complaint, on March 29, 2021, Dr. Westcott wrote:

“Upon completion of testing, Ms. T’s assessment measures were scored and double-checked by the psychological assistant team. It is a standard practice at Mandel and Associates to score files twice to ensure accuracy. I [Dr. Westcott] also consulted with Dr. Mandel while preparing my report. Dr. Mandel reviewed a preliminary draft given his initial involvement with the referral and that this is a typical practice for contracted associates at the firm [Mandel and Associates Ltd.]…”

Dr. Westcott’s Response to Ms. T’s Complaint, dated March 29, 2021, p. 6

Remarkably, Dr. Westcott, Dr. Mandel, and “the psychological assistant team” in Mandel and Associates did not discover numerous errors and falsehoods in Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report despite all the reviewing and double-checking that, according to Dr. Westcott, they did.

Even more remarkably, Dr. Troy Janzen, Complaints Director and Deputy Registrar of College of Alberta Psychologists, wrote:

I personally reviewed all the testing completed by Dr. Westcott’s assistants to ensure that all raw scores were correctly summed, that the psychometricians followed reported basal and ceiling rules as required in standard administration, that scores and responses were faithfully recorded in the protocols, and that scores were correctly reported. I can attest that scoring was all done accurately with no errors in administration that I could detect….

Dr. Janzen’s dismissal of Ms. T’s complaint, dated September 27, 2022, p. 16

Accordingly, even though he “personally reviewed all the testing”, Dr. Janzen also did not discover the errors and falsehoods detailed above, and contrary to his statements, the scores were certainly not “correctly reported” and scoring was not “all done accurately.”

One may wonder how many Ph.D. registered psychologists with the College of Alberta Psychologists and “psychological assistants” in Mandel and Associates Ltd. it takes to correctly score and to correctly report a psychological test’s scores. It appears that three PhD-level registered psychologists and “the team” of assistants are not enough.

Dr. Mary Westcott’s interpretation of the GATB CDN is largely plagiarized from a computerized interpretive report

When interpreting Ms. T’s GATB CDN scores, Dr. Westcott copied much of “her” interpretation from the GATB computerized interpretive report found in her clinical file, without quotes and without acknowledgment. A reader of Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report would have no idea that the interpretation of Ms. T’s scores was largely provided by a computer rather than by Dr. Westcott. Quite obviously, in interpreting Ms. T’s performance, the computer did not know Ms. T’s circumstances, did not know about “behavioral, cognitive, emotional or physical factors affecting test performance” such as Ms. T being physically ill, vomiting during the testing, the GATB testing interruption, etc., and did not know that Dr. Westcott failed to inform the computer to add +1 SEM as the 1 SEM was not added. As a result, the computer’s interpretations were wrong, and Dr. Westcott’s copy of the computer’s interpretations (presented as if they were Dr. Westcott’s own interpretations) were also wrong.

What did Dr. Westcott actually plagiarize from the computerized interpretations? A lot.

Dr. Westcott’s plagiarized Interpretation of General Learning Ability

The column on the left is the computer’s interpretation of Ms. T’s performance whereas the column on the right is what appears in Dr. Westcott’s Report. The text highlighted in blue was taken by Dr. Westcott’s from the computerized interpretation, without quotes and without acknowledgment.

Dr. Westcott’s plagiarized interpretation of Verbal Aptitude

The column on the left is the computer’s interpretation of Ms. T’s performance whereas the column on the right is what appears in Dr. Westcott’s Report. The text highlighted in blue was taken by Dr. Westcott’s from the computerized interpretation, without quotes and without acknowledgment.

Dr. Westcott’s plagiarized interpretation of Numerical Aptitude

The column on the left is the computer’s interpretation of Ms. T’s performance whereas the column on the right is what appears in Dr. Westcott’s Report. The text highlighted in blue was taken by Dr. Westcott’s from the computerized interpretation, without quotes and without acknowledgment.

Dr. Westcott’s interpretation of other aptitudes

Similarly, Dr. Westcott’s interpretation of other aptitudes was also largely copied from the computerized interpretive report, without quotes and without acknowledgment. Anyone can persuade themselves of this fact by comparing the computerized interpretive report and Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2015 Report side by side:

• Computerized GATB Results Summary and Aptitude Profile Interpretation (with minimal redaction)
• Dr. Westcott’s exposition of Ms. T’s performance on the GATB CDN and interpretation of Ms. T’s performance. Note that the yellow highlighted text is text identical to the text in the computerized report and in Vespa v. Dynes. Red text corrects Dr. Westcott’s errors and false statements and provides explanatory notes.

Dr. Westcott’s and/or her “psychological assistant team” scoring of the GATB CDN

The GATB CDN Results Sheet extracted from Dr. Westcott’s clinical file is mostly blank. The “Test administrator’s notes” are blank, “Test Administrator” is blank, the check boxes whether Ms. T was given “Form A” or “Form B” are blank, and all the boxes for the derivation of the Standardized Scores or Aptitude Scores + 1 SEM are all blank. The red marked-up text on the GATB CDN Results Sheet was added by myself (using General Working Population norms published in the GATB CDN Manual) and the last row shows what the Aptitude Scores + 1 SEM were. A blue pen raw scores were filled out by someone in Dr. Westcott’s/Mandel and Associates Ltd. office and were assumed to be accurate.

Notably, the GATB CDN computerized interpretive report found in Dr. Westcott’s clinical file lists Aptitude Scores without +1 SEM and clearly says so: “+1 SEM has not been included”. As is obvious, Dr. Westcott failed to include +1 SEM herself, contrary to her false statement.

Dr. Westcott’s interpretation misused the NOC Career Handbook Aptitude Levels

Dr. Westcott explicitly relied on the NOC Career Handbook Aptitude Levels (the numbers from 1 to 5) to make the following claims:

• Regarding G Aptitude: “Elementary school teachers typically demonstrate above average learning ability compared to the general working population.”
• Regarding V Aptitude: “…elementary school teachers typically demonstrated above average verbal aptitude as reported in the NOC.”
• Regarding N Aptitude: “Elementary school teachers typically demonstrate average numerical aptitude as listed in the NOC.”

Dr. Westcott’s statements are unwarranted, baseless, and patently wrong:

• The NOC Career Handbook is clear that Aptitude Levels were not based on any actual workers in any specific occupations (see above). To state the obvious, the NOC Career Handbook data are not norms (they are not based on any representative sample of individuals working in specific occupations or jobs). The Career Handbook Aptitude Level data are beliefs that some unknown people formulated once upon a time, in an era long time gone. These beliefs state where — in which Aptitude Level wide ability bands — the most frequent aptitude scores for various occupations (as opposed to jobs) may lie.
• The most frequent aptitude scores (and corresponding Aptitude Levels) are not minimum requirements as about 50% of teachers would score below those most frequent scores (a statistical fact for a normal bell-shaped distribution).
• The Career Handbook clearly states that the beliefs — Aptitude Levels — published in the Career Handbook may be suitable for career counseling and explorations but that they are not to be used for any kind of high-stakes decisions (see above).

If Dr. Westcott had done any kind of search for any experimental data on how, for example, Canadian university students scored on Canadian GATB CDN or if she even “googled it” by placing “GATB Canadian university” into Google and waiting approximately .33 seconds for the result, Dr. Westcott would discover a study by Yeasting (1996). Yeasting (1996) administered GATB CDN to undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology courses. The mean G, V, and N aptitudes of these normal Canadian undergraduate students tested in 1995 were 90.94, 90.34, and 87.22 (see p. 27, Group 2), about 1/2 standard deviation below the GATB CDN General Working Population norms.

Ergo, Dr. Westcott would have to conclude that Ms. T’s GATB CDN scores were comparable to those of Canadian university students, indicating no impairment and no decline in Ms. T’s cognitive functioning.

Dr. Westcott could then speculate about why Canadian university students score below GATB CDN GWP norms. If she did, Dr. Westcott could speculate that (a) Canadian universities prefer to select students with low cognitive ability, and therefore, in Canada, the more years of education one has the lower cognitive ability one has (it is unlikely but it is one of the possible speculations), (b) GATB CDN GWP norms were not really norms at all as no one knows (and the manual does not describe) who those approximately 1,000 people in the GWP norms were and how they were selected, and (c) the GATB CDN GWP norms were obsolete — the World continued to change as time went by, and, for example, the introduction of calculators in 1980s reduced students’ numerical fluency in intervening decades (e.g., LeFevre et al., 2014) (see Using outdated, obsolete, and irrelevant test data to make disparaging statements about a client’s IQ).

Dr. Allan Mandel, President of Mandel & Associates, reviewed and approved Dr. Westcott’s Sep. 15, 2010 Report, including errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism

Dr. Allan Mandel, President of Mandel & Associates, approved of Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report and did not notice or identify any errors, falsehoods or plagiarism within it.

On February 4, 2011, School District No. 5 emailed Dr. Westcott and informed her that (a) Ms. T was assessed by another psychologist, Dr. K, who opined that “Ms. T’s neuropsychological profile would likely not preclude her from being able to adequately perform most of her teaching duties.”, (b) School District No. 5 was “struggling” with Dr. K’s opinion, (c) School District No. 5 knew “being in front of a class is not right ” for Ms. T, and (d) School District No. 5 was seeking Dr. Westcott’s advice on how to proceed.

Only about an hour later, on February 4, 2011, Dr. Mandel emailed School District No. 5, informing the district that Dr. Westcott was on maternity leave and that he, the President of Mandel and Associates Ltd., was “handling all of her clinical matters”. In the same email, Dr. Mandel opined that “Dr. Westcott’s findings” were “very well reasoned and based on very objective findings.” In his email, Dr. Mandel made no mention of numerous errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism in Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report, and did not mention that he was closely involved with and in preparation of Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report itself.

Dr. J. Braxton Suffield reviewed Dr. Westcott’s Sep. 15, 2010 Report, and found some errors but failed to point out other errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism

Dr. Suffield reviewed Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report, and without ever talking to Ms. T, on October 19, 2011, Dr. Suffield faxed his review and opinions of Ms. T to the School District No. 5. In the report, Dr. Suffield correctly noted that Dr. Westcott failed to add 1 SEM to Ms. T’s scores, but falsely stated that adding 1 SEM increased Ms. T’s aptitude levels only for perceptual and motor aptitudes.

A few months later, after Dr. Suffield reminded himself of his professional obligations to see Ms. T before pronouncing opinions about her and, after meeting Ms. T for the first time on November 30, 2011, Dr. Suffield issued another report, Dr. Suffiled’s December 30, 2011 Report. In this later report, Dr. Suffield repeated the same numbered paragraphs nearly verbatim.

2.4.7 Vocational aptitudes (pages 15-17) were assessed using the GATB, a standard measure of vocational aptitudes. [Comment: Unfortunately, Dr. Westcott erred in interpreting the results. Although she stated she followed the standard practice of adding one standard error of measurement to Ms. T’s scores, she did not.]

2.4.7.1 Rescoring the test with this factor added increased Ms. T’s perceptual and motor aptitudes to the next highest level.

Dr. Suffield’s October 19, 2011 Report, p. 10

Contrary to Dr. Suffield’s statements, the rescoring increased Ms. T’s four aptitudes — S, P, Q and M — to the next highest levels (see above).

Dr. Troy Janzen, Complaints Director and Deputy Registrar, College of Alberta Psychologists, also reviewed the report and concluded that “administration and scoring of all tests” was “acceptable” and “accurate”

Dr. Acton, from Falcongate, noted in his investigation report (which Dr. Janzen claimed to have read) the following:

… Dr. Suffield noted that Dr. Westcott had erred in scoring the GATB. Rescoring Ms. Tuson’s GATB data resulted in two of her sub-tests being moved to the average range of function …

Dr. Acton’s Investigation Report, dated Feb. 17, 2022 (p. 12)

Thus, if Dr. Janzen read either Dr. Suffield’s October 19, 2011 (or December 30, 2011) Report or Dr. Acton’s Investigation Report as he said he did, Dr. Janzen knew that “Dr. Suffield noted that Dr. Westcott had erred in scoring the GATB.”

Moreover, Dr. Janzen made several further astonishing claims:

I [Dr. Janzen] personally reviewed all the testing completed by Dr. Westcott’s assistants to ensure that all raw scores were correctly summed, … and that scores were correctly reported.

I [Dr. Janzen] can attest that scoring was all done accurately with no errors in administration that I could detect.

Her [Dr. Westcott’s] administration and scoring of all tests appeared to fall within acceptable ranges of standardization and were accurate.

Dr. Janzen, Complaints Dismissal Letter, dated Sep. 27, 2022 (p. 16)

Contrary to Dr. Janzen’s conclusions, Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report’s description, scoring, and interpretation of Ms. T’s GATB CDN is full of errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism.

Why would Dr. Janzen conclude that Dr. Westcott’s scoring was “accurate” and “acceptable”?

One possibility is that Dr. Janzen did not actually “personally reviewed all the testing”, did not read Dr. Suffield’s finding that “Dr. Westcott erred in interpreting the results”, did not read Dr. Action’s Investigation Report telling him that “Dr. Suffield noted that Dr. Westcott had erred in scoring the GATB”, did not read Ms. T’s complaints, etc., and simply dismissed Ms. T’s complaints without examining any evidence. If so, Dr. Janzen failed to perform his duties under the Health Profession Act, and ought to resign immediately.

Another possibility is that Dr. Janzen actually “personally reviewed all the testing”, was fully aware that Dr. Westcott did not score the GATB accurately, and was fully aware of Dr. Westcott’s errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism, but intentionally chose to misrepresent the facts and pretend that Dr. Westcott’s September 15, 2010 Report was not full of errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism. If so, Dr. Janzen’s conduct is beyond the pale and the reputation of the College of Alberta Psychologists and its ability to regulate psychologists in ashes.

Conclusions

The public expects a psychologist to score tests accurately, to make truthful statements about tests and scores (i.e., not to lie), and to interpret test scores and results accurately rather than plagiarize the interpretation from some computerized interpretive report. First, a requirement that a psychologist correctly reports scores seems obviously necessary. If accuracy is not required, one may as well buy a magic eight ball and use it to make decisions about anything, including anything psychological.

Second, the public expects psychologists to be knowledgeable. The public expects that psychologists use current knowledge of the discipline (rather than what the knowledge was decades or centuries ago), and form an opinion based on facts rather than fiction (e.g., based on accurate rather than erroneous scores). To state the obvious, a computer or computer software is not a registered member of the College of Alberta Psychologists, is not authorized to pronounce opinions about anyone under Alberta’s Health Profession Act, and cannot be cross-examined under oath. Numerous ethics codes are explicit that psychologists cannot substitute computerized interpretation for their own opinions and that they must acknowledge sources of anything they copy or use from computerized reports. For example, the College of Psychologists of British Columbia Code of Conduct (2009) states:

11.19 Reliance on computer reports A registrant must never substitute computer generated assessment reports or statemetns for his or her own professional opinion, assessment or report.

11.20. Acknowledgement of sources A registrant who uses computer-generated interpretive statements in preparing
psychological evaluations must (a) acknowledge the sources of such statements in a written citation that is
formally included in the client report, and (b) formally quote, using an appropriate format, any material taken verbatim from
computer-generated interpretations.

College of Psychologists of British Columbia Code of Conduct (2009) (see also CPBC Code of Conduct (2014), 11.19 and 11.20, for similar wording)

Third, the public also expects the College of Alberta Psychologists to protect the public from psychologists who (a) are “displaying a lack of knowledge or lack of skills or
judgment”, (b) are unwilling or unable to comply with the code of ethics, (c) are unwilling or unable to comply with the standards of practice, and (d) are harming the integrity of the profession.

Dr. Troy Janzen’s dismissal of Ms. T’s complaints against Dr. Westcott demonstrates that Dr. Janzen sees nothing wrong with Dr. Westcott’s errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism. This is surprising. Dr. Janzen describes himself in his LinkedIn profile as “experienced” and “skilled” in “Clinical Supervision, Psychological Assessment…” and as a “Strong healthcare services professional with a Ph.D. focused in Counselling Psychology from University of Alberta.” As a clinical supervisor and adjunct at the University of Alberta, Dr. Janzen ought to understand that Dr. Westcott’s numerous errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism are not acceptable.

Ms. T’s appealed Dr. Janzen’s dismissals of her complaints against Dr. Westcott to the College of Alberta Psychologists’ Complaints Review Committee (CRC). The CRC is now examining Ms. T’s appeals. Will the two psychologists and two community members on the CRC also find that Dr. Westcott’s errors, falsehoods, and plagiarism galore is minimally acceptable conduct for the College of Alberta Psychologists registered psychologists? Time will tell.