New Cult Motivated Suicide

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2371180.ece

I admit that I haven't kept up with the cult of Scientology. Since I last commented on their crimes, they haven't changed much. There are another wave of protests scheduled for May, but in the mean time, just consider that the cult has caused another suicide.

Kaja Bordevich Ballo, the daughter of a Norwegian MP, committed suicide after taking a Scientology promoted personality test, and being told that she was set for failure. She has now been buried. My deepest condolences to her family; she didn't deserve to die.

The "Oxford Capacity Analysis" (which, contrary to what the name suggests, has absolutely nothing to do with Oxford University) was designed by the cult to give the similar responses to anyone who takes it - that they are in grave need of assistance from the cult. The test outcomes are, without exception, negative; although the test has a maximum score of 100, no combination of answers will yield anything close to that score. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the cult, instructed test administrators to emphasize the imminent "ruin" of any test taker who failed to look to the cult to solve the problems proportedly revealed by the test.

Although the cult has been running this same test since 1961, and competent psychometric experts have been condemning it almost as long, it still has not been banned, and the cult continues to use it as a recruiting tool. It rarely advertises its own involvement with the test, instead, the test takers simply are given a free test from an obstensibly neutral agency.

(For a more complete discussion of the test's workings, follow this link. For another analysis, see here.)