The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) has undertaken an initiative to focus the attention of custody evaluators, family law attorneys, and in this writer's view most importantly, the courts, on the importance of using social science research in family law matters. In 2018, this interdisciplinary organization made up of lawyers, judges, and mental health professionals, promulgated Guidelines for the Use of Social Science Research in Family Law. In October of this year, it will conduct a three-day conference in Pittsburgh largely devoted to this critically important topic.

While the Guidelines rightly emphasize the importance of distinguishing valid from invalid research, there is an antecedent issue that deserves equal, perhaps greater, attention. That is the distinction between (1) evaluations that are based upon the accumulated knowledge of the psychology discipline, as established by empirical research reported in the peer-reviewed literature of the discipline; and (2) those evaluations that are not so predicated, but instead bandy about cavalier opinions without so much as a nod to the research-based body of demonstrable knowledge that represents the essential core of the psychology discipline.

To appreciate the prevalence of forensic evaluations that are detached from psychology's knowledge base, lawyers and judges need answer just one simple, clarifying question: When is the last time you read a forensic custody report that was replete with research citations supporting each inference, conclusion and opinion expressed therein? More tersely stated, Where's the science? This article will address the essential role of psychological research in the conduct of forensic custody evaluations. It will further address the abandonment of that research-base by no small number of evaluators, and the significance of that dereliction, which must be fully understood by the lawyers and judges who are the consumers of these reports.

What Is Psychology?

Given that custody evaluators are typically qualified in court as "experts" based on the strength of their formal degrees and certifications in the subject of psychology, it is important, at the threshold, to understand what psychology is. Psychology defines itself as "the scientific study of behavior and mental processes." Morris, C.G. & Maisto, A.A., Psychology: An Introduction [Eleventh Edition], Prentice Hall, p. xii, [2002] (emphasis added). Remove the word "scientific" from that sentence and one is no longer talking about psychology. Other fields of intellectual inquiry, e.g., philosophy, theology, etc. speculate on questions of human behavior and mental processes. Psychology, in contrast, rejects speculation and commits to confining its conclusions to those that are predicated upon demonstrable knowledge as established through research grounded in the scientific method.