ABSTRACT
These words of the hard sell vendor, perhaps most often heard in the open markets up and down our towns and cities rather than in the more sophisticated emporia in New Bond Street, were how the Deputy Home Secretary, Paul Boateng, chose to introduce the government’s ‘dangerous and severe personality disorder’ (DSPD) proposals for new services and law at a conference in 1999 sponsored by Leicester University. To the hopeful researcher into personality disorder they were, perhaps, music to the academic ear, or at least encouragement that they could be assured of respectability within their institution in the next but one round of the Research Assessment Exercise. At last a government was taking personality disorder seriously and putting some money into it. But perhaps the words are reassuring only on their face. Their usual connotation suggests caution, even outright cynicism. Indeed, since most senior researchers are not only (necessarily) optimistic for their science but also (again necessarily) always at least scientifically skeptical, is it not likely that most, in welcoming the government’s initiative, and money, would be quietly cynical; ‘governments always have an eye on their own advantage and their reasons for this “opportunity of a lifetime” are likely to be their reasons, and not mine’. But perhaps the ultimate cynicism lies in one possible response to this insight of the researcher who is prepared to take the money, ‘what matters is the money and the science, my reasons not the government’s’, since it is likely, perhaps consciously so, to cut the researcher off from a proper attempt to view the DSPD proposals in total, and in their broader context. After all, these are proposals not just for new research and services but also for new law, and new law that will be passed before a single research paper is published arising out of any new research funding. The law is to precede any research findings, suggestive at least that the attitude to the research, and certainly to any negative findings that might logically cut across, or counterjustify, the proposed new legal orders, may be ‘so what?’.
