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Criminology Crime-Line
Adventures in the Pseudosciences

November 2010, by Dr. Randy Gonzalez www.drgonzo.org VOL. 1 ISSUE 5

Sleight of Hand in the Magic for Fallacies
of Inference:
Brash arrogance with a “commanding” sense
of the literal, absent in-depth research for the
facts, in determined self-righteous entitlement,
two generations of anti-thinking have evolved in
American society. In the egocentric self-focused
obsession with personal self-gratification,
between roughly 1970 and 1975, logical
deductive criticality in forethought became
relegated to the few skeptical inquirers who stand
by the necessity of rational processes.
Multi-media melodrama, in the form of
fictional crime dramatizations, replaced the real
world of practitioner oriented empiricism in
evidence driven documentation. For those in the
psychodynamic time-warp of the post Vietnam
era, to the millennial fixation of visual self-
indulgence, crime fiction replaces crime fact.
Televised story telling in the genre of “crime
stories” has become the impetus for fabricated
gullibility across the spectrum of social
networking. Recruits into the realm of criminal
justice yearn to be like archetypes on TV.
Short-cuts naturally evolve from such an
“urban legend” oriented mindset. So, likewise,
everyone wants to be a “criminal profiler”, or a
“crime scene investigator”, or a “detective”, and
avoid the time consuming foundation building
process of starting at the line level.
Why waste time starting at the bottom and
working through the ranks when you can go
right to the top and take over the crime lab? You
already know everything anyway, right? Heck,
social magic taught us that you’re awesome, full
of praise and flattery with level playing grounds
where everyone’s wins and no one loses.
Anti-thinking permeates communal
interactivity particularly as related to the field of
criminology. Sleight of hand tactics are easily
employed to distract and deflect from the
centrality of significant issues. Myth, magic and
metaphor are used to simplistic advantage to
overwhelm, wear down and frustrate laborious
intentions to counter with investigative reality
as opposed to emotional finality.

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Criminology is an adult oriented investigative
process that requires logical deduction
and best left to a higher level of
mature experienced understanding.
Anti-thinking is lazy thinking. It doesn’t require much
effort and reflects a very superficial level of reactionary
responses. Such purposeful lack of decisive insight,
immaturity and profound avoidance for logical analysis
evades truthful validation for criminological queries. In
this realm of fuzzy thinking, some of us suggest the
commonplace use of the concept of OPUS. From which,
reference is made to the baser more prurient levels by
which people communicate.
OPUS is an ellipsis for the notion of “obsessive-
compulsiveness in unsubstantiated subjectivism”. Feelings
become more relevant to you than the facts of a particular
matter. You believe one way and you’re happy with that.
You don’t want someone messing with your belief system.
A person gets uncomfortable when they face change,
especially if there’s any chance you might be wrong about
your point of view.
This of course is cognitive bias in search of subjective
validation. Why think critically with a healthy sense of
skepticism and sober tincture of cynicism, when you, like
many, can be pretend to be gullible and naïve? Similarly
perhaps, a few prefer to use social vernacular, which is to
“act stupid”. Trouble-free thinking says things that are
foolish and ignorant. Very simply, this reflects your own
inner selfish desires to accept that which makes you feel
good. Thus, in part, it has a potent connection to your
psycho-sexual evolution. There is a challenge between
neural impotence and mind altering potent ecstasy.
For many, that also means you’re not very well evolved
P a g eyou.
or self-differentiated from others around | 2 In fact, you
prefer the herd to your own independent psycho-dynamic
liberation. For others who are more daring, the evolution of
human psychic energy continues to unfold with insight,
enlightenment and individuality. You’re dangerously
different and present from moment to moment.
If you’re associated with a collegiate setting, for
instance, you have an opportunity to witness OPUS in
operation. The surreal world of academia serves as a good
exemplar. For instance, in a criminal justice class of sorts,
fact often competes with fiction for the dominance of
fantasy over forensics. From television and media
sensationalism, we’ve learned magical thinking in place of
scientific veracity and evidentiary certainty.
Within this very fertile field of anti-thinking, the
probability is huge for rich harvest in facetious ideologies.
OPUS finds fruition in an aberration of a sophomoric
cause-effect nexus. The superficial acceptance for myriad
fallacies of inference leads to hasty generalizations that
lack logical conclusions, forensic verification and viability
of provable consistency. Instead, the function of OPUS is
to believe what you want to believe in spite of the facts,
because that’s what you want to believe.
Take a case study in murder. For goodness sakes, don’t
even suggest that circumstantial evidence might be viable
in a court of law. A lot people don’t want to hear that.
Why? Because television dramas have taught us that you
have to have DNA, fingerprints or something higher, like
divine intervention to have a case against a criminal. Or,
maybe something even more cosmic than that, like
“criminal profiling”! You could also call in “psychic
detectives” to aid in further distractions from the truth.
Hypothetically speaking of course. Let’s say you have a
triple murder of three children in a small town and you’ve
identified a couple of multi-murderers. The teenage
suspects in question are subsequently convicted by a jury,
who bear sole responsibility for the final verdict, by virtue
of circumstantial evidence. However, for many outsiders
who can’t accept that, an illusion of clever showmanship
spawns a alleged “criminal justice controversy” steeped in
conspiracy, with a cast of characters, cameras, movies stars
and the pretest of judicious news reporting.
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So, consider the possibility that if a case gains high profile status, you’re
going to attract all kinds of media attention and wannabe groupies.
Why? Its human herding, social collectivism and group consensus.
Because, OPUS has come to haunt you’re investigation you have to be
on your toes. Kind of like an Area-51 mystical thing.

And, if you’re in the so called “Bible Belt”,
and non-practitioners/believers can’t accept the
final verdict based on circumstantial evidence,
then someone let the devil out of the abyss and
there’ll be hell pay. How’d you do that?
Well, another thing, if there are hints of satanic
cults, heavy metal music, wearing black clothing
and dabblers’ flirtation with things alleged to be
demonic. Or even cultic implications of UFO’s or
a government cover-up, you got your hands full
trying to stand by the facts of the case. Such tall
tales make for an artistic sleight of hand in movie
making psycho-babble. Before you know it,
there’s a cable TV story all about the police and
prosecutorial screw ups. Again, OPUS comes to
the forefront of fruition.
Keep in mind though it’s very difficult to
subpoena ghosts and devils and put them on the
witness stand. None the less, the proverbial black
cat is out of the bag. So, the incestuous nature of
communal collectivism in anti-thinking (gossip,
rumor and blissful blather) gets to work. Before
you know it, everybody had fixated and conjured
some so called “satanic panic”. Uh oh, time for
silver bullets and maybe a “magic bullet” theory.
Talk about psycho-sexual debauchery in
mystical thinking. But, an alleged “controversy”
can last a decade or two and still prove nothing
substantial. In the dreamlike world of visual
expression, as in arts and entertainment anything is
possible. In the sphere of modern “edutainment”,
entertainment, star power personal promotion and
mass marketing are far more important than the
truth or any evidence. Problem solving in
criminology is much than one’s self-centered
opinion or simplistic guess-work.
An investigative process demands rational
deduction that centers focus on compelling
circumstances, expert opinion, suspect background
history, credible witnesses and applied forms of
forensic techniques. Yet, for many on the outside
looking in, way out of their psychodynamic
domain, none of that matters. Where non-
practitioners are concerned, who think they’re
experts in their new found field, anything is
possible. If you don’t understand how
criminological processes work in the real world,
then you ought to keep your thoughts to yourself
and simply observe until you learn something.
Knowledge, understanding and wisdom, oh my.