Commentary: A case study on case studies

When doctors want to assess a patient they put together a “case.” When lawyers want to assess a legal situation they put together a “case.” The famed Harvard Business School’s training of top-level executives is “case-based.”

What is a “case,” anyway?

A case could be defined as an objective and reasonably thorough assessment of the nature of a situation, paying particular attention to the sources of the situation, to the probable results of the situation, and to the key people influencing the situation. That amounts to past, present and future power players.

So what?

Well, an unbelievable number of raging controversies in the news and politics are not case-based! That is, even if you wrestle with the Internet for an hour it can be almost impossible to answer the question, what is the case, here? That is, what’s really going on? How did it start? Where is it likely headed? Who are the main people making it happen?

Without an adequate case description it is hard for the average citizen to know what to do about a situation (such as inter-group violence), how to vote, or even what to say. But without intelligent public dialogue, how can anything get settled?

What to do?

Society’s members, even though scattered about, are ultimately in charge of the whole system. The public is a “virtual governor.” One way the public can bring reason and control to bear on social conflicts is to insist that the spokespeople for government, business and civic organizations issuing press releases present credible, case-descriptions of situations.

Not just spin. Not just blame.

Monty Python, the comedy troupe, tells the amusing story of a cheese shop that actually doesn’t have any cheese. If, together, we expect credible, case-based announcements from organizations, perhaps we can keep our society from being an information shop that doesn’t have any information.

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Dr. STEVE DAVIDSON is a clinical psychologist in Newport Beach.