Public Announcement of Child Welfare Fraud

This is a comment I posted on the Psychology Today blog,Child Myths, Straight Talk About Child Development by Jean Mercer, Ph.D.

She actually developed some really good arguments, but, alas, she did not touch the fraud, waste and abuse...so I did.

The response is not, per say, directed at Ms. Mercer, but to the academic community.  There were some really hard pressing comments about her not meeting the benchmarks of authority to comment, so I had to step up and speak out for her:


One key point the academic community fails to recognize is the First Amendment right to free speech. Academic work is not only constrained within in the boundaries of institutionalized policies of public etiquette, but is often silenced when there is a conflict of financial interests in the course of study.
What this means is a professional will stay within the academic comfort zone so as to pacify the publishing authorities and the funding sources, leading to researcher bias.

A person who hails not from the academic arena and is not draped with laurels of educational accomplishment is often dismissed as being suspect with their views or information. A person's only recourse is a court of law by which the judgment will, again, publicly sequester the information from the academic community.

With that said, the key point this article fails to recognize is the Freedom of Information Act ability to secure data to formulate any type of opinion. In Child Welfare, a Medicaid funded service, there is no possible way to obtain any original source information unless a person has subjected to it as the information is excluded and exempted from public scrutiny.
Because you have dismissed this parent's input and left her to fend for herself against the academically controlled diffusion of information kingdom, I challenge any authority you possess on this subject matter.

Here is my response to that very same New York Times article: Poor Children Likelier To Get Abused

The issues of fraud, waste and abuse were never raised in this article.

To learn about Medicaid fraud in Child Welfare, I am An Original Source. Feel free to engage me.

So, if there are any Ph.D.s, J.D.s, or anyone who supports the Child Welfare System in its current form,  out there who have the balls to engage me, bring it on. 

The topic:   Fraud in Child Welfare