{"id":844,"date":"2026-08-23T20:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sd5bc.info\/?p=844"},"modified":"2026-08-23T21:15:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T21:15:38","slug":"comparing-the-incomparable-how-dr-john-braxton-suffield-fabricated-a-0-9th-percentile-score-to-disqualify-a-canadian-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sd5bc.info\/index.php\/2026\/08\/23\/comparing-the-incomparable-how-dr-john-braxton-suffield-fabricated-a-0-9th-percentile-score-to-disqualify-a-canadian-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing the Incomparable: How Dr. John Braxton Suffield Fabricated a 0.9th Percentile Score to Disqualify a Canadian Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Dr. Bob Uttl<\/p>\n\n\n\n

United States Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, Washington, D.C.<\/p>The actual source of the data Dr. John Braxton Suffield misrepresented to the College of Alberta Psychologists as coming from “the Canadian edition of the GATB”<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Claim<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In his September 27, 2021 expert report filed with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a>, owner of Dr. J. B. Suffield & Associates<\/a>, offered a precise, quantified claim about Ms. T’s intellectual fitness to teach:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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… The aptitude figures for elementary school teachers (NOC 4142) originated with 497 seniors in university education programs who participated in the initial and cross validation for this group. The data are in Table 9-3 of Section III (page 170) of the manual for the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB)… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. T’s score of 83 in Dr. Westcott’s 2010 assessment was more than 2 standard deviations below this average, at approximately the 0.9 percentile<\/strong> [emphasis added] of this sample of nearly 500 prospective teachers.<\/p>\nDr. John Braxton Suffield, Sep. 27, 2021 Expert Report, pp. 13-14<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The 0.9th percentile is a dramatic figure \u2014 it tells a tribunal that, among prospective teachers, all but roughly one in a hundred score higher than Ms. T did. It is precise, it is quantified, and it is presented as a scientific fact grounded in the aptitude norms of the very test Ms. T was administered: the GATB CDN, the Canadian edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is none of those things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Dr. Suffield Already Knew, a Year Before He Ever Heard of Ms. T<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a>‘s April 2010 email correspondence goes further than establishing that the Career Handbook’s occupational levels lack empirical grounding. In the same email exchange \u2014 a year before School District No. 5 first contacted him about Ms. T \u2014 Dr. Suffield was told directly, by Nelson Education (the GATB’s Canadian distributor) and by Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC, the test’s developer), several things relevant to what he would later submit to the Tribunal and to his own regulator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, that the U.S. GATB had fallen out of use in its own country because of documented racial bias.<\/strong> On cross-examination, Dr. Suffield confirmed his own April 2010 email showed he knew this at the time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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QUESTION:<\/strong> According to this email, you were aware that USES GATB was no longer widely used in the U.S., correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> Correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

QUESTION:<\/strong> And you knew that it came, quote, “under fire from the U.S. Justice Department because of cultural bias issues,” unquote, correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> Yes…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

QUESTION:<\/strong> Did you understand at the time that the cultural bias issues [referred] to the fact that… Black test takers scored substantially lower than White test takers and thus were deemed ineligible for jobs at much higher rates than Whites?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> Yes, that was part of the concern. I believe there were some civil rights actions in the U.S. based on those findings or allegations.<\/p>\nCross-examination of Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Second, that no Canadian equivalent of the U.S. occupational data \u2014 the section containing tables like Table 9-3 \u2014 has ever existed.<\/strong> The correspondence itself, read into the record, shows Nelson’s own contact telling Dr. Suffield in April 2010: “Unfortunately, my files do not include the Canadian edition of Section 4.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked directly whether anyone has ever established occupation-specific empirical norms of this kind for the Canadian GATB, Dr. Suffield’s answer under oath was unqualified:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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QUESTION:<\/strong> Have you ever seen any occupational norms of the sort which we looked at [in the] U.S., conducted by administering the GATB [in Canada]?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> No.<\/p>\nCross-examination of Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By his own account, then, Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> knew \u2014 from April 2010 onward, before he had ever heard of Ms. T \u2014 that the instrument whose occupational validation data he would later cite to a human rights tribunal and to his own professional college had a documented history of racial bias serious enough to draw U.S. Justice Department scrutiny, and that no Canadian equivalent of that occupational data has ever existed for him, or anyone, to see. Dr. Suffield did not disclose any of these facts in his 2021 expert report or in his 2021 letter to the College of Alberta Psychologists. Instead, Dr. John Braxton Suffield knowingly mislead the College of Alberta Psychologists<\/strong> and wrote in his response to Ms. T complaint against him that the Table 9-3 was from “the Canadian edition” of the GATB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where the Table 9-3 Actually Comes From<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ms. T’s complaint to the College of Alberta Psychologists<\/a> followed directly from this report. She alleged, among other things, that Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> had relied on and failed to criticize the claim that the GATB “permits comparison of client characteristics with those of actual workers in specific occupations” \u2014 a claim he had personally been told, by the test’s own publisher, was unsupported and clearly false. In his written response to the College, Dr. Suffield defended his use of Table 9-3 \u2014 the same table underlying the 0.9th-percentile figure in his Tribunal report \u2014 describing it — falsely — as coming from “Sections III and IV of the Canadian edition of the GATB.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 2026 cross-examination, shown the actual source document (Exhibit CB228), Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> was asked to confirm what it was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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QUESTION:<\/strong> It prominently states here, United States Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, Washington, D.C. Would you agree with me that this is the manual for the [U.S.] General Aptitude Test Battery, which you copied Table 9-3 from? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> Yes, I believe if we turn to page 170 in this manual, we’ll find that table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

QUESTION:<\/strong> That’s where you copied your table from, correct? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR. JOHN BRAXTON SUFFIELD:<\/strong> Correct.<\/p>\nCross-examination of Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is no Canadian edition source for Table 9-3. Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> claim to the College of Alberta Psychologists that Table 9-3 came from “the Canadian edition of the GATB” was patently false, intentional disinformation. Dr. Suffield knew no such data existed for GATB CDN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> finally admitted under oath and penalty of perjury, Table 9-3 comes from a U.S. Department of Labor manual and not the Canadian GATB manual, the data were gathered using U.S. GATB and not GATB CDN, the data were based on US sample and not Canadian Sample; and the data were about 60 or 70 years obsolete at the time he used them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the Distinction Isn’t Academic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ms. T was tested on the GATB CDN (Nelson, 1986), normed in 1985 for the Canadian population. The U.S. GATB is a different instrument, with different norms, developed and normed decades earlier. Dr. Suffield’s own report to the Tribunal draws the comparison as though the two are interchangeable \u2014 computing Ms. T’s percentile against a sample that was never part of the test she took.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, this was not an available substitute for missing Canadian data offered in good faith. Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> had specific, personal, prior knowledge \u2014 dating to correspondence with the GATB’s publisher in April 2010, and reconfirmed in further correspondence in 2014 \u2014 that neither the GATB CDN’s occupational levels nor the Career Handbook data used to interpret them were empirically derived from any tested sample, Canadian or otherwise. On cross-examination, he described the actual process behind the Canadian occupational levels published in the Career Handbook as a panel of raters assigning categorical judgments \u2014 “simply categorical readings” \u2014 not measurements of real workers. No Canadian equivalent of a 497-teacher validation study exists, and Dr. Suffield knew it did not exist, at the time he offered Table 9-3 as though it filled that gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the U.S. Table Actually Contains<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even considered strictly on its own terms \u2014 as 1950s American data, correctly labeled \u2014 Table 9-3’s underlying norms do not withstand scrutiny. On cross-examination, walked through the source USES GATB manual page by page, Dr. John Braxton Suffield<\/a> confirmed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n