From a fellow psychologist:
My favorite example of APA cognitive dissonance involves their positions on the death penalty for teens and parental notification for teen abortions. Predictably, they claim that teens are too neurologically immature to know what they’re doing when they kill others and, thus, capital punishment is inappropriate for them. But when it comes to abortion, teens as young as 12 or 13 or 14 are neurologically capable of weighing all their optionis and making the decision with no help from Mom or Dad.
Such contrasts clearly illustrate that the organization’s mission is often a political, not a scientific, one. Despite my disagreement with their tendency to impose political interprations on research, I still belong to APA, primarily because of their online data bases and journal access. Besides, I like keeping track of what they’re up to..
