The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) has undertaken an initiative to focus the attention of custody evaluators, family law attorneys, and in this writer’s view most importantly, the courts, on the importance of using social science research in family law matters. In 2018, this interdisciplinary organization made up of lawyers, judges, and mental health professionals, promulgated Guidelines for the Use of Social Science Research in Family Law. In October of this year, it will conduct a three-day conference in Pittsburgh largely devoted to this critically important topic.

While the Guidelines rightly emphasize the importance of distinguishing valid from invalid research, there is an antecedent issue that deserves equal, perhaps greater, attention. That is the distinction between (1) evaluations that are based upon the accumulated knowledge of the psychology discipline, as established by empirical research reported in the peer-reviewed literature of the discipline; and (2) those evaluations that are not so predicated, but instead bandy about cavalier opinions without so much as a nod to the research-based body of demonstrable knowledge that represents the essential core of the psychology discipline.