Iowa State University researchers Christian Meissner and Adrienne Lyles recently evaluated Title IX programs for investigators, and found the training is based more on lawsuit-avoidance considerations and ideology, rather than on proven science.

Published yesterday in Science News, Lyles explained,

• "Many of the programs I attended were offered by for-profit companies and law firms. The law firms focused on how to avoid litigation and the for-profit companies were very generic and not evidence- or research-based practice."

Lyles is the associate director of Equal Opportunity and senior deputy Title IX coordinator at Iowa State University.

Some training programs suggest that investigators can determine the veracity of a Title IX complaint by watching the behavior of the respondent during the interview. But Meissner and Lyles say there is no evidence to support the value of such an approach. They also found no scientific evidence that victims and perpetrators have different neurobiological responses to the same event, as some programs have claimed.

So will "neurobiology of trauma" investigators pay heed to these research findings? We hope so.

P.S. Here's the citation to the journal article: Christian A. Meissner, Adrienne M. Lyles. Title IX Investigations: The Importance of Training Investigators in Evidence-Based Approaches to Interviewing. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2019.