Facts, Artifacts, Mythofacts, Invisible Colleges, Illusory Colleges: The Perils of Publication Segmentation, Citation Preference, and Megamultiple Authorship: A Commentary on Blashfield and Reynolds

Abstract

When the editors of the Journal of Personality Disorders asked me to pen a commentary on the Blashfield and Reynolds (2012) piece on their “invisible college” analysis of the reference list associated with the DSM-5 work group’s proposal, I was not particularly inclined to do so. However, with some reflection I came to see the paper as affording any number of interesting points for discussion. In reading (and rereading) the Blashfield and Reynolds paper, I found myself thinking: What did they find? Why did they find what they found? Most importantly, what do their findings mean? At the end of the day, I believe Blashfield and Reynolds have offered us evidence not of an “invisible college” of insiders connected with one of the longitudinal studies of personality disorders at work crafting the DSM-5. Rather, consideration of their findings, the data upon which they are based, and their interpretation point to the existence of an “illusory college” reflective of fascinating publication artifacts. The intellectual danger afoot in Blashfield and Reynolds’s paper is that their invisible college interpretation could take on the status of what my former colleague Brendan A. Maher (1992) called a “mythofact,” or a fact-like statement that, while not actually true, is demanded by the flow of the narrative. In short, my impression of the results obtained by Blashfield and Reynolds in their citation analysis reflects a perfect storm resulting from (a) publication segmentation, (b) citation preference/style, and (c) megamultiple authorship propensities on the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS). The results of the Blashfield and Reynolds analysis do not provide compelling support for their claim of the CLPS staff driving the hybrid dimensional/categorical model proposed for the DSM-5.