Free Advice

When a big story breaks, the first thing reporters do is get the news. The next thing, usually, is to round up a few experts to say what it all means. Too often, what gets experts quoted -- and called again the next time news relates to their specialty -- is not specific knowledge of a case but crisp, piquant opinion. The expert enjoys the publicity; the journalist enlivens a story. The losers are the public, who get ill-informed speculation masquerading as analysis, and the news subjects, who are assessed in intimate, knowing terms by strangers.

Many health professionals refuse to dispense such pseudo expertise, saying if it is wrong to discuss patients about whom they know something, it cannot be right to diagnose people they have never met. Yet even hard-liners were startled last week when the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Psychologists opened an investigation of four practitioners -- a procedure that could end in revoking their right to practice -- because of interviews they gave the Boston Globe about the emotional problems of Kitty Dukakis, wife of Governor Michael Dukakis. An acknowledged recovering alcoholic and amphetamine addict, she was hospitalized Nov. 5 after drinking rubbing alcohol.

None of the therapists had treated her. Yet they speculated, according to the Globe, that Mrs. Dukakis' difficulties resulted from "taking on her husband's emotional burdens as well as her own"; they implied that the Governor is repressed and in effect made him the culprit in her illness. The psychologists also said he too needed therapy to help his wife. One even suggested that Dukakis resign his office (his term runs through 1990) to aid his wife's recovery. After the board acted, some of the psychologists said they had been misquoted or their remarks had been taken out of context, which the Globe denies.

The state inquiry impinges on press freedom and is politically awkward: registry-board members are appointed by the Governor. A better idea would be to shame media and "experts" into ending the practice. Says George Annas, professor of medical ethics at Boston University: "The board shouldn't regulate this. It calls for self-restraint on the part of journalists and professionals, and that is very hard."