Should Peter Nathan Be President of the APA?

Stanton Peele
Morristown, New Jersey

Mark Goldman, of the University of Southern Florida, has begun a campaign to nominate and elect Peter Nathan president of the American Psychological Association. This is a bad idea. Nathan discounted controlled-drinking (CD) treatment while he headed the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS), possibly to curry favor with R. Brinkley Smithers, who gave the Center $3.54 million (in 1986) during Nathan's tenure (1983-89), as well as due to general opposition in the field to CD treatment. (See my article, "Alcoholism, Politics, and Bureaucracy.")

On a personal note, Peter Nathan gave me several key opportunities nearly twenty years ago for which I will always be grateful. I also understand that managers of grant-dependent institutions like CAS face financial pressures to keep their programs funded. However, I felt that bureaucratic and ideological concerns were being placed above science and sound clinical practice during Nathan's tenure. That this should occur at one of the leading alcoholism research institutions seemed wrong to me and, despite my ties to Nathan, I spoke out.

The critical issues concerning Nathan's suitability for the APA presidency are the following:

A. Nathan's Use of His Office in Relation to R. Brinkley Smithers

Facts as I Know Them

1. Smithers deeply opposed CD treatment.
2. Smithers had grown disillusioned with CAS because it allowed dissemination of pro-CD research in its Journal.
3. Nathan, after taking over the directorship of CAS, succeeded in recementing the relationship with Smithers.
4. CAS did not practice, research, or propose CD treatment during Nathan's tenure, during which Nathan actively and repeatedly opposed CD treatment in numerous publications.

My Questions Are

1. Did Smithers require/request assurances that CAS would not support CD treatment?
2. Did Nathan assure Smithers that CAS would not do so?

The Issues for Nathan's Candidacy

1. As head of a research-oriented institution, did Nathan close off exploration of an area of clinical practice in alcoholism?
2. Did he do so, despite receiving Federal and State funding for CAS, because he needed to mollify a private donor and due to other bureaucratic concerns?
3. Can we get more information on these questions, for example by publishing the documentation at Rutgers on Smithers' gift, and by questioning Nathan and others with knowledge about the negotiations surrounding the gift?
4. Would affirmative answers to (1) and (2) disqualify Nathan for the presidency of a research-oriented, public service, clinical and academic organization like the APA?

What I Have Done So Far to Find Out

1. I published an article in Addictive Behaviors entitled, "Alcoholism, Politics, and Bureaucracy" reviewing this information, to which Nathan responded in the same journal issue. He did not use this opportunity, however, to clarify the nature of his dealings with Smithers.
2. Several times I requested in writing from Rutgers, CAS, and its current director, Robert Pandina, the files on Smithers' award to CAS, requests which were refused. These refusals occurred although Rutgers is a State University in New Jersey, where I live, and although I have taught at Rutgers and received the Mark Keller Award from CAS. In addition to federal laws providing access to public information, New Jersey has an Open Public Records law guaranteeing access to information from public agencies.

B. Nathan's Position on CD and Related Therapies

Facts as I Know Them

1. Nathan published book chapters in the early 1980s in which he described (a) practicing CD therapy with alcoholics (1982) and (b) designing and attempting to implement a CD treatment program based on an extensive review of the CD literature (1980).
2. Nathan defended during the same period the Rand reports (the second was published in 1980), which found frequent CD outcomes among treated alcoholics, and Mark and Linda Sobell against attacks by Mary Pendery and Irving Maltzman published in Science in 1982 on the Sobells' research establishing the effectiveness of CD treatment for alcoholics.
3. Nathan's work had repeatedly questioned the validity of the tenets of the disease approach to alcoholism (such as the notion that alcoholics cannot control their drinking) on which exclusively abstinence-oriented treatment was based.
4. After 1983, when he became director of CAS, Nathan became increasingly anti-CD treatment, publishing a series of articles and book chapters claiming that CD treatment was not well- established, was ineffective, and was possibly unethical.
5. Following Nathan's departure from Rutgers in 1989, CAS gradually reintroduced treatment based on the possibility of CD outcomes, including motivational interviewing, treatment goal choice by clients, and brief interventions.
6. Research existed to support these approaches (research with which Nathan was well familiar and had even defended), and I (and a few others, such as Martha Sanchez-Craig) argued that it was wrong for Nathan to oppose exploration and use of these techniques.
7. There was tremendous pressure against CD treatment in the alcoholism field during the 1980s, and to practice or promote CD treatment (as Nathan noted) could endanger one's career.
8. Currently, these CD-related approaches are well-established as among the most cost-effective alcoholism treatments by a number of meta-analyses/review summaries.

Other Issues for Nathan's Candidacy

1. If Nathan failed to envision, despite considerable available evidence, the value of (or at least the value of exploring) approaches to alcoholism developed by psychologists and now shown to be among the most cost-effective treatments, thus meeting the needs of modern cost-conscious health care funding, should he be president of APA?

Fred Rotgers wrote:

While I have no position one way or the other about Peter Nathan's candidacy for APA president, I do want to correct some mis-information contained in Stanton Peele's post.

I am the director of two programs at the Center of Alcohol Studies, both of which offer clients a choice of drinking goals in programs based on Bill Miller's Drinker's Check-Up, motivational feedback interviewing and a mix of Martha Sanchez-Craig, Miller, and Hester's behavioral moderate drinking training programs. I was the impetus for this programmatic direction for both programs, and so I am a bit more qualified to comment on the exact reasons for their existence. Stanton has no first hand knowledge of this at all.

Both programs were initiated following an extensive review of the scientific literature on drinking goals, a review of ongoing studies at the Center of Alcohol Studies, and discussions among clinical faculty at CAS, half of whom had experienced very little contact with Peter Nathan. The goals of adding a client-determined goal approach were threefold: 1) to establish a niche for our programs in the age of managed care, and 2) to provide an option that clearly could serve to expand the marketability of our programs to problem drinkers who did not view themselves as alcohol dependent or needing to abstain for life, and 3) to continue with CAS's commitment to providing intervention services based on solid scientific evidence, not speculation or personal theories.

The bottom line is that neither Brinkley Smithers (who was actually still alive when we began planning the program) nor the Smithers Foundation played even the slightest role in our decision to enact this program option, contrary to what Stanton wants to believe, and continues to write. In fact, so doing has resulted in significant negative reaction from Smithers Foundation--nonetheless, both programs continue to operate.

Our treatment philosophy at Rutgers is to provide treatment based on a thorough assessment, and clear knowledge of assessment results by both the client and clinician, with the client then left with the responsibility he/she always has anyway--to decide what course of action makes most sense to him/her. The guiding task is then to assist the client in realizing that course of action. The politics of the alcohol field, despite what Stanton asserts, play no role whatsoever in the development of our programs.

Frederick Rotgers, Psy.D.
Center of Alcohol Studies

Stanton responded:

As I understand Fred Rotger's update on my post on Peter Nathan, he affirmed all of my main points:

1. After Peter Nathan left Rutgers, since it had no CD program during Peter's tenure, Fred and others who had little contact with Peter decided that a CD-oriented program was in order;
2. This decision was based on a body of scientific literature showing that CD, motivational interviewing, and brief interventions were among the most cost-effective treatments;
3. Such a program would enable a forward-looking treatment provider to respond to the demand for efficacy and financial accountability from managed care funders;
4. As a result of this new direction, Smithers withdrew support from Rutgers after previously supporting Nathan's abstinence-oriented regime.

I guess my writing isn't as clear as I hoped, but I don't think Fred quite understood my point re (4) (Fred wrote: "The bottom line is that neither Brinkley Smithers -- who was actually still alive when we began planning the program -- nor the Smithers Foundation played even the slightest role in our decision to enact this program option [i.e. CD treatment], contrary to what Stanton wants to believe, and continues to write. In fact, so doing has resulted in significant negative reaction from Smithers Foundation--nonetheless, both programs continue to operate.)

I'm glad Fred has no position on Peter's aspiration to be president of APA, since his information seems to support the idea that, responding to pressures from Smithers and the dominant disease ideology in the field, Peter Nathan abandoned (a) sound clinical practice, (b) his own prior experience and viewpoint, (c) grounded research results, (d) forward-looking treatments that respond to the modern health-care landscape. Should this man be president of APA? I rest my case.

Stanton further wrote:

Mark Goldman's hyping of Peter Nathan for President of the APA is a bad idea. As head of the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, Nathan made a deal with the devil by indicating to R. Brinkley Smithers that controlled-drinking therapy was a dead letter at the Center. This was necessary because Smithers, the Rutgers Center's largest benefactor, had written Rutgers out of his will for publishing CD research. Three years after Nathan took the helm at Rutgers, however, Smithers (in 1986) renewed his commitment with a $3.54 million donation to the Center. (See my web site, "The Politics and Persecution of Controlled Drinking and Drug Use" section.)

Nathan contests this version of events. But this much is clear -- after Nathan left Rutgers in 1989, the Center reopened itself to the CD treatment Nathan rejected. Currently, the Center administers a clinical program that includes controlled- drinking goals. It was forced to do so because it became clear that in rejecting CD, Nathan had jettisoned the most successful alcoholism treatment modalities -- self-selection of treatment goals, brief interventions, and motivational interviewing.

At the least, Nathan's judgment about what comprises good alcoholism treatment is demonstrably wrong. His analysis of where alcoholism treatment was headed and what psychologists had to do to get there was completely incorrect, and perhaps venal. After an earlier career in which he attacked disease theory conceptions -- most notably that alcoholics lose control of their drinking -- he repudiated his earlier work for what turned out to be a temporary gain (after Brinkley Smithers died, the Smithers Foundation, now directed by Adele C. Smithers, no longer accepts grant applications from the Rutgers Center).

At worst, these events suggest that Nathan has a soft intellectual core -- and a willingness to negotiate what should be decided scientifically -- that is the opposite of the vision and integrity that psychology requires to carry it forward into the 21st Century.

Peter responded:

Iowa City, January 9th

Dear Colleagues:

My first inclination, on reading Stanton Peele's libel about me on this net, was simply to dismiss it on the assumption that anyone who knew me and knew Peele would recognize that Peele's statement this time, like so many others in the past, is untruthful, self-serving, and utterly devoid of conving data. Besides, I didn't want to continue a dialogue, begun many years ago, that was resolved for most people long ago. However, after some reflection, I realized that many people who read this net do not know me and do not know Peele. Accordingly, they deserve to have the brief but comprehensive response to Peele that follows.

Peele claims that I changed my mind about the efficacy of controlled drinking treatment for alcoholics between 1983-85, from positive to negative, in order to secure a large gift for the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies from Brinkley Smithers, at the time a recovering alcoholic who had, a decade earlier, broken his philanthropic ties with the Center over the publication of material in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol that took a wait-and-see attitude toward the viability of controlled drinking. Peele also claims that I forced students and colleagues at the Center to hew to my own position on controlled drinking lest they suffer retribution. For both these reasons, he questions my fitness to be APA president.

All these claims are untrue and unsupported by any evidence - and Peele knows that to be the case.

To begin: At no time in any discussion with Brinkley Smithers about anything, including a possible gift to Rutgers, did the question of controlled-drinking treatment come up. Never. Not ever. Nada. No quid pro quos, no under-the-table agreements, no implicit understandings. Nothing. There are no incriminating pieces of paper recording this deal because no such deal was made.

Mr. Smithers wanted to give Rutgers substantial funds because he cared about the Center and the work it proposed to do. When he and I talked about the gift, in the mid-80's, my sense was that many of the issues which had concerned him in earlier years, including controlled drinking, were no longer important to him. He had a pretty good idea his days were numbered and he wanted a portion of his resources invested in the places that planned to do the work he thought needed to be done. Rutgers was particularly appealing because we planned to establish a Division of Prevention; toward the end of his life, prevention was one of Mr. Smithers' greatest interests.

In other words, Peele's claim that I made a sordid deal with Brinkley Smithers to secure a gift for the Center is untrue, unfounded, and unsupported. Moreover, it was based on another erroneous belief: that I changed my mind about controlled drinking from positive to negative starting in 1983, when I became Director of the Center of Alcohol Studies

To continue: My concerns and apprehensions about controlled drinking did not suddenly arise in 1983, when I became Center Director, or in 1985, when I began working with Mr. Smithers around a gift for the Center. In fact, as I noted in 1992, in an extended dialogue with Peele on these same claims, published in the 1st number of Volume 17 of Addictive Behaviors, I had begun to have serious questions about the viability of controlled drinking before the end of the 1970s, by which time I had concluded that the data on controlled drinking treatments that had accumulated during the 1970s was sufficiently insubstantial that I didn't want to bet patients' lives on it.

Evidence for this statement, which directly contrasts with Peele's recent libel on this net as well as his Addictive Behaviors piece a few years ago? How about the following, taken directly from a chapter I wrote on behavioral treatment for Mendelson and Mello's The diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism, published by McGraw-Hill in 1979, four years before I became director of the Center of Alcohol Studies and six years before Mr. Smithers and I talked about a gift to the Center?:

1. For a variety of good reasons, we think abstinence ought to be the initial goal of treatment for alcoholism. These reasons include that most of us function better when we are sober, that abstinence-oriented treatment clearly works for some patients while the success rate of controlled drinking-oriented treatment is less certain, and that certain death follows the decision of many chronic alcoholics to resume or continue drinking.
2. Alcoholics who have achieved sobriety must not be led to believe that they can ever drinking in controlled fashion; no available data suggest that goal can be achieved.
3. Alcoholics who have repeatedly tried and failed to achieve abstinence, who despair of ever doing so, and who are nonetheless physically able to drink moderately ought to be considered candidates for controlled drinking-oriented treatment. The reason? A pattern of controlled social drinking, less desirable than abstinence, is nonetheless more desirable than a pattern of uncontrolled asocial drinking.
4. What is needed, more than loud voices and clamorous dissent, before rational decisions on treatment goals can be made for anyone, is additional comparative research on the applicability, efficacy, and permanence of the results of both abstinence-oriented and controlled drinking-oriented treatment. How such research might be designed, beyond the scope of this chapter, is suggested elsewhere (Briddell & Nathan, 1976; Nathan, 1976; Nathan & Briddell, 1977; Nathan & Lansky, 1977).

Are these words, written in 1978 and published in 1979, those of an unbounded advocate for controlled drinking, as Peele would have it? Hardly.

It seems to me, instead, that I could not have been more clear about my concerns for the adequacy of the evidence for the efficacy of controlled-drinking treatment for alcoholics when I wrote this chapter in 1979. Similarly, I think I made clear in these words my belief that controlled-drinking treatment ought to be chosen for chronic alcoholics only when abstinence-oriented treatment has failed repeatedly. Numerous other writings at that time made essentially the same points. That was my position in 1979, it was my position in 1983, it was my position in 1985, and it is my position today.

At the same time, it is important to note that I have long supported - in fact, supported in 1985 and now support - the exploration of controlled-drinking treatment for early stage problem drinkers, since the data for the efficacy of controlled-drinking treatment with this group, gathered by such colleagues as Sanchez-Craig, were distinctly more compelling than those describing controlled drinking treatment for chonic alcoholics.

As well: Peele also libels Rutgers' students and colleagues by claiming they acceded to pressure from me to adopt a "party line" vis-a-vis controlled drinking and other doctrinal matters. That claim too is completely untrue and unsupported. Can you imagine Barbara McCrady, Rob Pandina, Jim Langenbucher - or Mark Goldman and Steve Lisman, for that matter - sitting still for this kind of censorship? For that matter, can you imagine an experienced research administrator at a first-rate place taking such a postion? To the contrary, my sense is that most colleagues from Rutgers' days remember me as uncommonly open - perhaps more than they would have liked - to diverse ideas, even those with which I strongly disagreed. In this, then, regretfully, Peele betrays his lack of knowledge of the way quality research centers work.

To conclude: For reasons which continue to escape me, though I've pondered them repeatedly, Stanton Peele wants to believe - and circulate - a basic libel about me from which he draws conclusions about my fitness to be APA president. I hope I have demonstrated here (and more extensively in the 1st number of the 1992 volume of Addictive Behaviors) that the libel is untrue. I also hope I have demonstrated, again, contrary to Peele's claims, all unsupported, that I do have the integrity, and the shared values, to merit your support in my quest for the APA presidency.

Peter E. Nathan

A friend of Peter's:

I was boundlessly pleased to see Peter's message in response to the allegations made by Peele. I have known Peter Nathan for many years and in different contexts, and the stories spread by Peele could not be true of the Peter Nathan I know and respect deeply and with no reservations whatever. Recently I have had the occasion to write letters supporting nominations of Peter Nathan for APA committees and awards. In those letters I have commented explicitly about his professional, scientific, and humanistic credentials, values, beliefs, and behaviors. There is one incident I wish tdo invite your attention to at this time. This was during the troubled days when APA owned Psychology Today. At that time I was Treasurer of APA, on the Board of Directors, and hence on the Council of Representatives. On more than one occasion Peter stood up forthrightly, persuasively, and courageously, in his denunciation of the liquor ads which to a large extent were sustaining Psychology Today substantially. This he did although many of his friends and colleagues were supporters of PT and hoped for its survival, one of those supporters was Mike Pallak, then Executive Officer of APA. Moreover, I believe that Peter wrote letters (to the editor of the Monitor and elsewhere) condemning the practice of an organization knowing the harmful effects of alcoholn blatantly overlooking these data so that Psychology Today might survive, while at the same time promoting the demise of readers of PT who might be persuaded by slick Madison Avenue advertising that they should continue to drink.

I note, too, with great admiration that Peter, in his chapter which he reproduced portions of to all of us, was pragmatic about and not doctrinaire over his positiopn against controlled drinking, when he indicated that with some people for whom abstinence was not possible, then controlled drinking should be pursued, reasoning as I recall that it's better to let the person seek to go along with controlled drinking than continue to drink with no restraint at all.

While I pledged to Dick Susinn (who would make an excellent APA president) that I would support him this time around as I have supported him in his earlier campaigns, Peter is still a splendid candidate. He would be accepable deservedly to the professional as well as the research?academic constituencies in APA/. He is a very articulate and believaboe speaker; He would mesmerize people on the hill in Washington and in the executive branch] odf government. For those of you who were dismayued about the poisonous allegations made about him, bde dismayed no longer, and if you were inclined to place his name in nomination (provided ]you still have the nominating ballotO) do so with pride and gratitude that people of his stature and accomplishmenets are willing to stand for election as APA president. Regardless of others you'd like to see in contention, as I feel about Dick Suinn for exam,ple,list Peter as one of your nominwwa. Then, once he is] one of the five nominees, rank him among the give based on your assessment of the biographical and issue statements published in the Monitor and accompanying the ballots.

I feel that it is an obligation of mine to tell others the truth about Nathan and to respond to what I consider slanderous behavior on Peele's part, especially those who will not be receiving this email. I trust that, simil;arly, you too will regard this dissemination of the true facts to be obligatory for you too.

Join me in a toast (moderately, of course) to Peter Nathan! Let's lift our glasses high, spiritedly, as we drink to Peter Nathan!

Bob Perlof

Stanton responded:

Dear Dr. Perlof:

Who are you supporting for President of APA? I was going to vote for Suzie, but Mary Jane picked me for Secretary, so I have to vote for her.

Jim Langenbucher wrote:

To colleagues in APA's Division 50:

It is with some hesitation that I add another voice to the recent controversy that has swirled up around Stanton Peele's championing of controlled drinking goals in alcoholism treatment. I'm writing to you because I'm very troubled by Stanton's allegations that Peter Nathan, while Director of the Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS) at Rutgers University, struck a devil's deal with R. Brinkley Smithers to promote abstinence-oriented treatment as the only option in the clinical and scientific activities of the Center. I'm troubled by this situation because I admire Stanton's brilliance, iconoclasm and numerous achievements, and yet deplore the chilling effect his recent messages to you may have on Peter's candidacy for APA President, at least among those who don't know these two men well.

Like Curt Breslin in his recent posting, and like Mark Goldman in his, I can assert from long familiarity Peter's integrity and, more than Curt or Mark, I have personal knowledge of the kinds of clinical and research activities that were supported by Peter during his important stewardship of CAS. I have that knowledge because, while a researcher and faculty member at CAS for the past 10 years, I was also, from 1987 through 1995, the Director of the Program for Addictions Consultation and Treatment (PACT) at St. Peter's Medical Center in New Brunswick, the principal clinical program administered by CAS. In terms of the actual clinical activity and applied philosophy of Peter Nathan's Center of Alcohol Studies, PACT was where the rubber met the road. Therefore PACT - as CAS's main outpatient treatment and inpatient consultation/liaison service, as CAS's clinical training venue for doctoral students in the Clinical Psychology programs at Rutgers, and as the base for most of the clinical research undertaken at CAS in the past many years - was the lens through which any deal between Peter and Mr. Smithers would have to have been made manifest.

Defying Stanton's thesis, at no time during my directorship of PACT did Peter seek to impose some regime of his own on me, on my colleagues of faculty rank, on my staff, nor on the dozens of students we trained. In fact I have never known Peter to suggest clinical goals or prescribe technique at variance with the best recent research, with which he is always thoroughly conversant. Also at odds with Stanton's thesis, Peter operated then as he does now from a position of respect and tolerance for a variety of points of view, taking a true scholar's delight in the ambiguities and inconsistencies of emerging knowledge. Therefore, did Peter, as Stanton maintains, ever discuss the "controlled drinking controversy" that loomed large in our field at that time? Yes, but with a judicious approach to the evidence involved, with a humane concern for the reputations of colleagues which seemed at times to be put at stake, and with a compassionate interest in the wellbeing of patients. Did Peter, as Stanton insinuates, ever try to inspire among his colleagues and students a particular point of view or clinical approach? Yes, but only one characterized by the qualities I've just stipulated: objectivity, and an overriding interest in the professional integrity of our practice community and the welfare of patients.

Finally, did Peter ever strike a bargain with Brinkley Smithers, promising to suborn data, perjure his own private judgment, and stifle the contrary utterances of his colleagues at CAS, a philosophically discordant and sometimes unruly group? Let me answer that question this way: Peter's conduct before, during, and after his directorship of CAS - and the conduct of many of the clinicians and researchers at all levels at Rutgers who've been influenced by him - is characterized by nothing more than it is by objectivity, intellectual honesty, and above all by an unusually deep and abiding loyalty to the professional and personal development of the many colleagues he cherishes. To advertise that any of us at CAS were ever muzzled by Peter in the way Stanton alleges, is as silly as the notion that, now liberated by Peter's departure, we are of one voice, or even a dominant voice, in favor of nonabstinent use goals in the patients we treat and the treatments we test. I want to continue to wish Stanton well in his other pursuits, but I wish Peter the presidency of APA. Please accept my assurance that nothing he contributed to the plural clinical philosophies of CAS adds anything less than luster to a reputation that warrants his election.

Respectfully,

James Langenbucher, Ph.D.
Research Diagnostic Project
Center of Alcohol Studies
Rutgers University
Piscataway NJ 08855-0969

Stanton responded to Jim:

Dear Jim:

Very good and effective message! I think you helped Peter's candidacy, without much damaging me. Well done. I must say, also, I learned something from it.

Best regards, Stanton

And to the list:

Dear Jim:

Thank you for your kind words about Peter Nathan and me. I am sure that you are right about Peter not making a deal with Brinkley Smithers in order to receive $3.54 million for the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies. But, if only for historical and cultural interest, I would like to examine the negotiations for this grant. As a faculty member at the Center, could you and I gain access together to all materials at the Center and Rutgers concerning the grant? And as a friend and student of Peter Nathan's, could you get from him all his records on this negotiation? I think the historical value of this material indicating the mood of the times (now over ten years ago) and the understanding it may offer in administrative sciences for the grant-gaining process would well repay our efforts. Is there any problem with this? I await your reply.

Best wishes,

Stanton Peele

Peter Webster noted:

Dear Jim Langenbucher:

Thank you for your kind words about Peter Nathan and me. I am sure that you are right about Peter not making a deal with...

Oooooh, tough lines! Nice twist of the blade! Can't say Ive enjoyed anything more on this list.

Peter Webster

Stanton wrote:

Dear Peter:

I thought it was quite good too. But two of the lists I sent it to refused it, even though Peter then sent Langenbucher's note out again with his kudos.

The list owners claim people are tired of this; in fact, one of the list owners claimed, "These complaints are coming even from people such as Neil Jacobson (in his case publicly), who has previously defended the right of people to debate heatedly on SSCPNET. I ask that you stop posting to SSCPNET and exchange email directly with the other discussants."

Neil's a big DRCtalker, ain't he?

No one seems to feel it necessary to require Peter and Rutgers to open up their files on this.

I'm thinking of returning to the legal route now, in order to gain access to the Rutgers files on this grant. I believe I will find in them, or Peter's correspondence, some revealing things, like discussions of CD.

Best, as always, SP

Stanton posted the following summaries:

Re: Peter's role as proselytizer against CD therapy

Stanton Peele says:

By the end of his stint at Rutgers, Peter Nathan had become the major anti-CD proselytizer within clinical psychology. What specifically provoked me to point out Peter's conflict of interest and compromised history in this regard was when I received the announcement for the 1990 Spring Meeting of the New Jersey Psychological Association, at which Peter was lecturing on the question of "A contemporary view of the controlled drinking controversy."

Thus, I discovered that Peter was informing nonspecialist psychologists in general education settings about the status of CD therapy. By this time the view he was expressing, was, to put it mildly, highly slanted (I had listened to Peter lecture to a recovery-oriented audience in the late-1980s).

Incidentally, I use "conflict of interest" in a technical sense. Peter was speaking as a supposedly disinterested professional with expert knowledge in the field of alcoholism. As defined in New Jersey statutes (as described in "New Jersey Practice"):

"Conflict of interests is a situation in which a public official, in addition to the first duty of loyalty to the entire public, has a second interest which either is or appears to be incompatible with the faithful discharge of his office." How about reading this to apply to: "a person in power at a public (state) academic institution who, in addition to his first obligation of a duty of dispassionate dissemination of information to the entire field (of psychology or alcohol studies), has a second interest which either is or appears to be incompatible with the discharge of his office...."

In my Addictive Behaviors article (available at my web site), I wrote: "The Smithers/Rutgers relationship calls to mind ethical questions that have been raised by private corporate donations to universities. For example, corporations have funded laboratories conducting research in areas of concern to the companies. Even when the corporation does not dictate the research agenda, its financial stake influences the direction of research at the laboratory. Obviously, funding of university programs by groups with political agendas endangers the integrity of the university even more. Where on this spectrum does funding by an opinionated private donor on a highly controversial issue where researchers have previously been intimidated fall?"

What do you think when an employee of a state institution receives (solicits) for his prestigious program $3.54 million (in addition to state and federal funds the program receives) from someone who has indicated a life-or-death opposition to controlled drinking, and this employee then stakes out an increasingly public position from this prestigious program consistent with that of the donor? Does it make you wonder? Does it strike you as kosher? Is an employee/faculty member at a public (state) institution free to negotiate any deal he wants with any individual, without questions being raised about his public positions? I don't think so.

And what if Peter decides to stake out a position with reference to CD therapy or alcoholism in order to gain support for APA? He now says his position on CD therapy has not changed since 1979, although his former colleagues at Rutgers indicate that their position and the options offered by the Rutgers program have expanded considerably since Peter left. To whom is Peter obligated as he scours Washington and the nation for funds? Does organized psychology have any commitment to knowledge and practice other than expedience and gaining top dollar? I wonder what the selection of Peter Nathan as APA president would indicate.

---

Incidentally, concerning libel and slander

As Peter Nathan accuses me of libel and his minion Dr. Perloff says that he considers my behavior slanderous, consider that libel and slander require that I know (or could or should have known) that what I write is false. Given that these charges have been raised, do you think that the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies should make available to those who want to see them the conditions and prior contacts on which the Smithers $3.54 million grant to Rutgers was given? Sorry, you can't see them. I have repeatedly requested access to these files, and have been denied, both by Robert Pandina (the current Center Director) and by University counsel Beckman Rich.^*

Do you think that an academic program like the Center interested in the pursuit of knowledge and truth should allow access to important files like these, about which questions might -- and have -- been raised? Do you feel more this way to know it is a state institution, and that it receives federal grants? Does it make it more plausible for the files to be made available if the person asking for them (myself) is a resident of the state in which the institution is located, that the state has an Open Public Records Act, that I am a former instructor at the University, a current (law) student there, a former recipient of the Center's prestigious Mark Keller Award?

Rather than being insulted that questions have been raised about the conditions under which the Smithers grant was given, and impugning my motives and claiming I know my accusations are false, how about just letting me and others see what the records have to say on the subject? In his comment on my original Addictive Behaviors article, Peter did not even bother to give his version of the events surrounding the Smithers gift. In his response to my original post on these lists, Peter now says (a decade later): "Mr. Smithers wanted to give Rutgers substantial funds because he cared about the Center and the work it proposed to do. When he and I talked about the gift, in the mid-80's, my sense was that many of the issues which had concerned him in earlier years, including controlled drinking, were no longer important to him."

Maybe that's true; I like to believe Peter is honest. But I'd like to see for myself. Isn't that the key to science? It may not even be a matter of honesty; perhaps Peter's memory isn't accurate. What I'd like to see are Peter's correspondence as Director of the Center with Smithers, both in his files and at the Center's, along with all official and unofficial notes and records. Peter, Robert (Pandina), may I see these? If not, could Peter and Perloff cease to claim my comments and questions comprise slander and libel?

Finally, while I am at it, let me quote Nathan and Niaura's (1985, p. 418) bald statement: "for a variety of reasons, abstinence ought to be the goal of treatment for alcoholism."

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* Letter, January 7, 1993, from Beckman Rich, Assist. University Counsel, to Stanton Peele:

I am writing in reply to you letter dated Dec. 7, 1992, which requests examination under the Federal Freedom of Information Act of all files connected with a gift from the R. Brinkley Smithers Institute to Rutgers University....

Rutgers is not generally subject to the Federal Freedom on Information Act. Furthermore, although the amounts and general purpose of a gift are generally made public, documents relating to gifts in general are not public records. Accordingly, it is not appropriate for me to direct that the records you wish to review be made available.

On February 26, 1993, Beckman Rich wrote: "let me assure you that my advice to you was based on the inapplicability of the New Jersey Right to Know law as well as the federal law which you cited."

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Finally, Smithers relapse

Although Peter Nathan now claims that R. Brinkley Smithers lost his preoccupation with CD therapy late in his life (Peter: "my sense was that many of the issues which had concerned him in earlier years, including controlled drinking, were no longer important to him"), this has not been true of the Foundation R. Brinkley Smithers created, which is now headed by his widow, Adele Smithers. For example, on July 20, 1995, the NCADD released the following announcement:

Experts convene to eliminate public confusion about "Moderate Drinking" in treatment of alcoholism

New York, NY.. A cadre of experts in the field of alcoholism today convened a press conference organized by the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation (this was R. Brinkley's father) to eliminate public confusion about reports that "problem drinkers" may moderate their drinking instead of completely abstaining from alcohol for the rest of their lives.

"Millions of Americans have recently seen life-threatening stories in the media claiming that people with alcohol problems don't have to stop drinking completely to get better," explained Adele C. Smithers, president of the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation. "But we who have worked in the alcoholism field for decades know that abstaining from alcohol is the only way to recover from the terrible disease."

"What most concerns us," said Paul Wood, PH.D. President of the NCADD...[is that] "These people are being advised to play Russian Roulette with their lives."

NCADD press releases of this ilk have named me in particular.

Given that psychologists (including the Rutgers Center) are among the most prominent practitioners of "moderate drinking" for "problem drinkers," will it be the APA's policy to defend psychologists against such attacks?