Very little media attention has been focused on Dr. Blasey Ford’s credentials and bona fides on the very topic she will be asked about, that being the acute and lasting psychological impact that abuse and things like sexual assault have on the victims. Especially young victims. She has written books about it. Not only that, Dr. Blasey Ford will explain at the hearing that the reason she chose her field of study comes directly out of the very assault she will tell us about on Thursday.
Republican Judiciary Committee Senators are making a mistake if they think having a woman sex crimes prosecutor question the accuser and the alleged perpetrator is going to help them. In reading the professional bio of Dr. Ford it looks to me like she would be more than qualified to be called as an expert witness for the prosecution in a sex crimes case. I would be interested to know if she has ever been one.
She compiles data and writes reports in journals about her findings for a living. She can cite statistics about victim behavior and be able to use scientific studies regarding sex crimes in her testimony. Some examples of questions might be “why did you wait so long?”, “How can your memory so clear about something that happened that long ago?” or “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” — she will have those statistics ready to tee up about how common her case actually is. This can be a teachable moment for these Senators and for all of America. I suspect the professor will not miss this opportunity to take us all to school.
In watching Brett Kavanaugh’s appearance on Fox last night, he looked uncomfortable and repeated the talking points derived from his many days of White House coaching sessions on a loop. He won’t get away with that in this hearing. A prosecutor will make him answer with way more specificity than he got away with on the friendly Fox platform. I think that Republicans may rethink this strategy before Thursday.
Just based on her Wikipedia page alone (see link and disclaimer below) I suspect it’s going to be a rough day for Brett Kavanaugh. Watch for Hawaii Senator and former prosecutor Mazie Hirono’s questioning. She took the biggest chunks out of him in the original hearings.
(Below this line are direct excerpts copied from her Wikipedia page. I have no content input in the rest of this diary and claim no authorship there of. All Credit to Wikipedia)
Full Wikipedia content can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford
Christine Margaret Blasey Ford (born November 1966),[1] known professionally as Christine Blasey,[2] is an American psychologist and professor of statistics at Palo Alto University.[5] Widely published in her field,[6][7] she specializes in designing statistical models for research projects.[8] During her academic career, Ford has worked as a research psychologist for Stanford University's Department of Psychiatry and a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine Collaborative Clinical Psychology Program.[3]
On September 16, 2018, she publicly alleged that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982, in what she described as an attempted rape.[6]
Ford spent her early life in Maryland, near Washington, D.C., where she attended a private university-preparatory school.[7][9][10] While on her regional sports team for diving, she accompanied diver Greg Louganis on a trip to the White House to discuss the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott.[10] She graduated in 1984 from Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland.[7][11][12]
She earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1988.[2][3] She received a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University.[13][14] In 2009, she garnered a master's degree in epidemiology, with a focus on the subject of biostatistics, from Stanford University.[15] She has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Southern California.[13][14][16] Her 1995 dissertation was entitled Measuring Young Children's Coping Responses to Interpersonal Conflict.[17]
Career
Ford began teaching at Stanford University in 1988.[18] She works at Palo Alto University teaching students clinical trial design and data analysis.[13] She participates in educational programs with the Stanford University School of Medicine as a member of a consortium group with Palo Alto University.[7][13][18]Through this consortium group, called the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (PGSP), Ford teaches subjects including psychometrics, study methodologies, and statistics.[7][10] She performed consulting work for multiple pharmaceutical companies.[19] Ford worked as the director of biostatistics at Corcept Therapeutics, and collaborated with FDA statisticians.[17] Ford is widely published within her field.[7][6]
Ford "specializes in designing statistical models for research projects in order to make sure they come to accurate conclusions," as summarized by Helena Chmura Kraemer, a Stanford professor emeritus in biostatistics who co-authored a book and several articles with Ford.[8] Ford has written or co-written several books about psychological topics, including depression.[14] Her other research topics published in academic journal articles have included child abuse and the September 11 attacks.[14][18] In 2015, she co-authored a book entitled How Many Subjects? Statistical Power Analysis in Research.[14][20] Ford's research into the social impact of hiding one's sexual orientation was published in 2016 in the journal Behavior Therapy, and reviewed by psychologist William Gibson of the American Psychological Association, who found their research "demonstrates that issues of identity have relevance to mental health outcomes in ways that much of previous work misses."[21]