The MMPI and its progeny MMPI-2 and MMPI-A, are among the most commonly used personality inventories. Also, if the test taker happens to be a menopausal woman who admits to feeling occasional hot flashes, she has one point counted against her. For example, agreeing that one experiences known symptoms of brain damage, such as headaches, nausea, dizziness, poor sleep, or fatigue are each counted as one point toward being a malingerer. The FBS contains true/false questions designed to categorize people who are experiencing genuine psychological distress or physical injuries as malingerers. The tragedy is that the publishers of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) recently succumbed to the Lees-Haley defense crowd and made the FBS a subset of the MMPI. The neuropsychologist hired by the defense administered to my nice client the FBS and concluded that she was a malingerer who was faking her symptoms.
Not surprisingly, she experienced permanent brain damage, with symptoms that included headaches, change in personality, loss of memory, word finding problems, problems thinking, anxiety, paranoia, depression, loss of sleep, and pain. This poor woman walked around with a piece of her skull missing for months, during which time her head resembled a squashed melon. Surgeons had to remove half of her skull in order to evacuate the blood clots and relieve the swelling. She suffered in her accident a blow to her head which caused a subdural hematoma, which in turn caused her brain to swell like a tick. Prior to the injury, she worked two jobs and was full of energy. I represented a wonderful person who suffered a severe brain injury. I have had recent experience with the misapplication of the FBS.
An on-line article in the Wall Street Journal skims the surface of the scientific problems with the Fake Bad Scale test. In my opinion, Lees-Haley created the FBS to bolster his and and other defense experts’ opinions in court. He charges $3,500 to evaluate a claimant and $600 an hour for depositions. Lees-Haley is himself a professional defense expert who derives 95% of his business working against personal injury claimants. Determining the truthfulness of a witness is the job of the jury, not a paid defense psychologist. No test can act as a lie detector, which is how forensic defense neuropsychologists are trying to use the FBS. Indeed, it violates the province of the jury by attempting to divine the credibility of witnesses. The Fake Bad Scale (FBS) is a bogus test created by Paul Lees-Haley to wrongly label personal injury claimants as “fakers.” The FBS is junk science and should not be allowed in a court of law.
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