"roger gonnet" <roger.gonnet@worldnet.fr> wrote in message news:<a98r1p$jn4$1@news5.isdnet.net>...

> 54 % of ex-scienos are suicidal.
>
> Source: "Snapping", Stillpoint Press, by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman.

No, this is out of context. 54% of the ex-Scientologists ~in their sample~ reported being suicidal. We really cannot make that sort of generalized conclusion to all ex-Scientologists from this study, which had a small and non random sample. I'm sure that Conway and Siegelman would not make this kind of leap and reporting it this way makes them look unfairly bad. The sample was drawn from ex-members who had contacted counter-cult organizations. The rule in reporting conclusions in research is that you cannot generalize to an entire population when the sample was not randomly selected and/or small.

This study also showed that 25% of ex-Scientologists and 75% of people in the combined cults they studied were "deprogrammed" and that certainly isn't accurate when generalized. Only a very tiny percentage of Scientologists who leave are counselled out. From the people I've seen who have left Scientology, I'd say it's less than 10% who actually become suicidal and that would be mostly people from the upper ranks or OT levels, who comprise a small percentage of people who are in Scientology.

Don't get me wrong here, Conway & Seigelman's study does have a great deal of merit and they are pioneers that I greatly respect because it was one of the first to demonstrate that there is at least a population of ex-cult members do suffer from a variety of symptoms and later studies by Paul Martin and his Ohio University doctoral students support this. If we start to make unwarranted generalizations and report their results out of context, however, ourselves and Conway &

Siegelman a great disservice in losing credibility altogether.

Monica Pignotti

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