Our special issue on using social media for forensic mental evaluations evokes the opportunity to address a critical but neglected aspect of using social media forensically: the possibility of political bias not only in forensic assessments but also in forensic publications involving interpretation of social media. As using social media in forensic assessments and scientific publications is now a burgeoning topic of professional attention, the present time to consider political bias makes this concern topical, even urgent. Excepting the excellent articles in this special issue which are free of gratuitous political bias, like the proverbial iceberg; the potential for political bias is out of sight and not addressed in the literature on forensic evaluations.
| POLITICAL BIAS IN FORENSIC PRACTICE AND PUBLICATIONAlthough bias is a recurrent concern in articles on conducting forensic mental exams and peer review publications in general, bias has not been addressed in articles on peer reviewed publications in forensic psychology and psychiatry, even in our article on "peer review to ensure quality in forensic mental health publication" (Felthous & Wettstein, 2015). Our most recent review found no articles on bias in peer-review publication in forensic psychiatry and psychology (Felthous, Wettstein, & Nassif, unpublished manuscript). A more focused political bias in forensic mental evaluations and publications is even less examined. Yet the risk of political bias is particularly high where social media is involved for two reasons: (1) social media entries of forensic relevance are often by their nature manifestly political or at least strongly ideological, and (2) psychiatrists and psychologists who conduct forensic evaluation, including ourselves, have political biases.Bias in publication has been defined as "a unidirectional systemic deviation from the truth" (Haffar et al., 2019), which would seem to require a pattern to be recognized. Slanted comments, however, need not be repeated or patterned to constitute bias. Where one opines about an individual politician or an event of political relevance, the expression could be patently political, even if an isolated expression. Peer review bias is defined as "a violation of impartiality in the evaluation of a submission" (Tvina et al., 2019, p. 2, citing Shatz, 2004 for publication. If lack of partiality results in bias in peer review, this could well be the essence of bias in forensic evaluations, research, and other processes of publication, especially if it leads to untruth or misinformation. Yet political "truth", political reality, is often like art and pornography, in the eye of the beholder. It may be that the more politically bias one is, the less likely one is to be aware of their bias or to want to control it.The term "bias", like prejudice, is often intentionally, justifiably used in a negative sense, but it need not be. Bias or prejudice can be favorable or unfavorable. A clinician should have a bias toward supporting the welfare of one's patient, the ethics...
