Personal Injury Law

Secretive Recording of Neuropsychological Testing and Interviewing

By Bruce Stern

I recently received the February 2009 issue of the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology.  The opening article is a position paper of the National Academy of Neuropsychology which is entitled 'Secretive Recording of Neuropsychological Testing and Interviewing: Official Position of the National Academy of Neuropsychology'.  The authors of this position paper are Shane S. Bush, Patricia A. Pipental, Ronald M. Ruff, Grant L. Iverson, Jeffrey T. Barth and Donna K. Broshek.
 
There, NAN has taken the position that neuropsychologists do not and should not encourage, condone or engage in the secret recording of neuropsychological interviews or testing as such practice is both deceptive and inconsistent with ethical principles.  The paper also notes, in addition, that such a recording may affect the behavior of the examiner. 
 
Obviously, the issue of secretive recording of neuropsychological evaluations most frequently, if not always, arises in the context of forensic neuropsychological evaluations for litigation purposes.  Further, in most instances, the secret recording would be requested by the plaintiff's attorney who was concerned about the impartiality of the defense neuropsychologist who is conducting the evaluation. 
 
While the position paper indicates that the examiner's behavior may be affected, there is no support in the position paper nor any research cited in support of this statement. 
 
Furthermore, as has been indicated in other published papers, many defense neuropsychologists are paid tens of thousands of dollars to serve as a defense neuropsychologists.  Certainly, the payment of large sums of money to serve as a defense forensic expert would have a greater effect on the examiner's behavior than that examiner recording the neuropsychological evaluation.
 
Finally, it is noteworthy that at the bottom of the position papers as well as all of the other papers published in this issue contain a section entitled 'Conflict of Interest'.  In the position papers, all of the authors have indicated that they have no conflict of interest.  While I do not know any of the authors personally and assume and presume that they have undertaken their study with total integrity, it would seem that since this position paper as well as many papers that are published in the Archives involve forensic issues, that where an author is involved in forensic litigation, that neuropsychologist disclose his or her involvement in such litigation and how much of such litigation is on behalf of plaintiffs and/or defendants.  Certainly, if a neuropsychologist earns a great deal of his or her income from forensic litigation matters that a conflict of interest may arise and the readers of the Archives should be aware of such.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on April 22, 2009 (boomark / email).