UCI Psychiatrist Bilked by Nigerian E-Mails (had claimed Reagan had diminished mental ability)

Los Angeles Times ^ | March 2, 2006 | William Lobdell,

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A renowned psychiatrist from UC Irvine was duped into squandering at least $1.3 million of his family's fortune on a Nigeria Internet scam, according to a lawsuit recently filed by his son.

...Louis Gottschalk, a neuroscientist, is the founding chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at UCI College of Medicine. He gained national prominence by announcing in 1987 that President Reagan had been suffering from diminished mental ability as early as 1980.

He came to this conclusion by using the Gottschalk-Gleser scales, an internationally used diagnostic tool he helped develop for charting impairments in brain function, to measure speech patterns in Reagan's 1980 and 1984 presidential debates.

In 1997, Gottschalk gave $1.5 million to the UCI College of Medicine. In exchange, school officials named the medical plaza after him and his late wife.

More recently, Gottschalk coinvented software that uncovered a link between childhood attention-deficit disorder and adult addiction to alcohol and drugs. And in 2004, at age 87, he published his latest book, "World War II: Neuropsychiatric Casualties, Out of Sight, Out of Mind."

[Slings and Arrows]

I refer to it as CRS: Can't Remember S***.

[george wythe]

"Then there's a line that gets crossed when they send in the money and then they're caught in a rationalization trap," Pratkanis said. "One way to convince yourself the scam is for real is to send more money, ironically enough."

This is so true. It’s like a youngster who buys a used car after his parents told him that the used car was a piece of junk. As soon as the car breaks down the first time, he will fix the car quietly by using his savings, or borrowing money from friends, or doing the mechanical work himself. Then the car will break down again, and the cycle will repeat, keeping his parents in the dark about the car's failures.

Trying to prove to his parents that he was ‘right’, the youngster can squander a lot of time and money. Of course, eventually reality kicks in, and the whole house of cards will come crashing down.

Even as mature adults, we play the same game on ourselves and our loved ones. Sometimes my wife will tell me that certain choice will be unwise, but I’ll go ahead with the wrong choice anyway for my own reasons. Eventually, when I start to have doubts about the unwise choice, I’ll try to play down the negatives and keep on defending the poor choice. In order to prove that I’m right, I will delay the inevitable as long as I can. At the end, I will have to admit that the choice was unwise. What a costly mind game is this rationalization trap!

Cult leaders, just like any other con men, know how to play that game too. That’s why when a loved one is sucked into one of those cults, he will continue to defend the cult and even draw closer to the weirdos in order to prove to himself and his family that he was right about accepting the cult teachings originally. The more we try to pry away our loved one from the cult, the more he will get into it. It’s a lose-lose situation.

[Onelifetogive]

I don't wish any one misfortune in their lives

Exactly. I either wish them zero misfortunes or hundreds of misfortunes. But I do not wish any exactly one misfortune.....

[traviskicks]

lol

[absolootezer0]

More recently, Gottschalk coinvented software that uncovered a link between childhood attention-deficit disorder and adult addiction to alcohol and drugs.

lets see.. isn't ADD often treated with DRUGS? ya think if i was pumped full of DRUGS as a kid i might be more prone to taking them later in life?

[Centurion2000]

Stupidity like this seems to be awful prevalent among psych students.

[lowbridge]

bump

[Auntie Dem]

So, let me see if I have this right. The idiot who had the audacity to declare in 1987 that Ronald Wilson Reagen was sliding into dementia, has only proven that Ronnie on his worst day, was certainly a whole lot smarter than the declaree. With that in mind, maybe it is understandable why the son of the declaree is working on the court case, or did I miss the demise of the declaree, or is this just more evidence of the state of mind of said declaree who on his best day couldn't handle a simple email from Nigeria, while RWR was winning the cold war, running the country, and generally making fools of those who thought he was the idiot.

Another way to put it is : A Conservative running on half his brain is smarter than a liberal running on all of his brain.

[steve-b]

Another standard con-man trick is to exploit the mark's greed to get him involved in a transaction that is shady on the face of it. That way, the mark is (at best) even more embarassed or (at worst) criminally liable himself if he admits what he got himself into.

A classic scam is the "money duplicator". The scam artist explains that he has a machine that can duplicate money, but it works very slowly and he needs a lot of money right away, so he's willing to sell it. He demonstrates the machine by running it for a few hours to "duplicate" a $20 bill. After collecting his payoff, the scammer has time to leave before the mark discovers that the machine doesn't work any more (of course, the original demonstration was accomplished by trickery with a second genuine bill). If the mark is stupid enough to go to the cops, he'd be admitting that he was engaged in a conspiracy to commit counterfeiting.

I know this sounds even more moronic than the Nigerian E-Mail Scam, but people actually fall for it.

[steve-b]

Forwarded to two liberal friends in CA who are so impressed with what the academic elite tells them to think.

Did any of our double agents post this story to DU? LOL!

[steve-b]

[purpleraine]

LOL! It’s a good thing for the Soviets that Reagan was mentally impaired.

[grey_whiskers]

This is so true. It’s like a youngster who buys a used car after his parents told him that the used car was a piece of junk. As soon as the car breaks down the first time, he will fix the car quietly by using his savings, or borrowing money from friends, or doing the mechanical work himself. Then the car will break down again, and the cycle will repeat, keeping his parents in the dark about the car's failures. Trying to prove to his parents that he was ‘right’, the youngster can squander a lot of time and money. Of course, eventually reality kicks in, and the whole house of cards will come crashing down.

You just described the whole subprime mortgage / financial crisis.

Cheers!

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

What’s that German word for delight in the misfortune of others?

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Gottschalk-Gleser