Two psychology experts have been tasked with reviewing an RCMP-commissioned psychological assessment of the gunman who killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in April 2020.
The Mass Casualty Commission called on psychologists Kristy Martire, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and Tess Neal, an associate professor at Arizona State University, to review the ‘psychological autopsy.’
RCMP Supt. Darren Campbell shared in June 2020 that the psychological autopsy found the gunman was an ‘injustice collector’: someone who held onto perceived insults until he “boiled over into rage.”
Neal and Martire found several issues with the assessment, including confusion around whether the authors worked for the RCMP.
“There’s no evidence that [the authors of the psychological assessment] were appropriately licensed, credentialed or in good standing in their profession,” Martire told the inquiry
Martire and Neal also said the psychological assessment included “frequent examples of opinions and beliefs being presented as fact.”
The authors had several instances where proper citations of published research, to verify and validate their report, was absent, Martire and Neal said their review of the report.
The pair also concluded that the RCMP had a “vested interest” in a certain outcome of the psychological assessment as the critical incident responders, meaning there could be a conflict of interest at play.
Additionally, authors would have known details about the outcome of the event before doing the assessment, Martire said at the inquiry.
“There appears to have been no attempt to reduce the potential effects of hindsight bias, such as blinding to some of the details of the outcomes or having the evaluation completed by someone who did not know the details of the outcomes,” Martire and Neal wrote in their report.
