An Open Letter to and Public Impeachment of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Professor, Dr. Lori Ann Post
If you remain enrolled in higher education long enough, you too will have a doctorate degree. But having one does not entitle a person to claim expertise in any subject that will net them ten minutes of mainstream media grifty time, nor does it exempt one from being exposed as an incompetent fraud when it’s accurate and appropriate. Should one also hold the respectable position of Professor of Medicine - without being a medical doctor, no less - it is only fair to expect to be held to the highest of professional standards when the cost of tuition is upwards of six figures per year. Failing to meet these standards, in any situation, with any individual, is unacceptable and the cowardice of ignoring it until it goes away when that failure has caused irreparable harm should never be ignored, but rather, placed under a halogen spotlight.
On January 8th, 2024, a letter was sent to Professor Lori Ann Post with additional copies sent to Feinberg Dean Eric G. Nielson and three school of medicine department heads.
Parts of it read:
“This letter is intended to notify you of and address the statement you provided to the Highland Park News/Chicago Tribune; In an article you were quoted as saying that Robert Crimo III’s decision to continue pro se in court is, “very consistent with psychopathy and narcissism.”
“I have reviewed your credentials and failed to locate the necessary licensure that would qualify you as a psychiatrist with DSM-5 diagnostic capabilities at all, let alone for a person you have never met nor personally treated.”
”Your statement was not only false, baseless, and an abject disregard of psychiatry ethics, it is beyond the scope of your practice as a medical professional and it would seem, after reviewing the literature available on the school’s website, it diametrically opposed the Feinberg Standards of Conduct.”
”With consideration to the wide dissemination of the publication in which this appears, it is far more likely than not that your careless words have been highly detrimental and prejudicial against Crimo’s Constitutional right to the presumption of innocence.”
The sole intent of the letter was to request an immediate retraction.
As of this writing, none of the five recipients from Northwestern University have responded and no retraction was ever issued.
Following Bobby’s surprise decision in 2023 to dismiss his public defenders (briefly) and opt for self representation in the hopes of exponentially speeding up his trial date - something he was completely unable to achieve with his appointed counsel - everyone had something to say about it.
Everyone was an expert and the experts all magically knew why he’d made such a choice.
Everyone deserved real estate in articles for their quotes and TV air time to take their turn in the public excoriation catalyzed entirely by assumption, as per usual.
Everyone believed he wanted to show the Court that he was the one in control, or that he wanted to put on a show in a disrespectful display of callousness and mockery.
All roads led back to the inevitable presumption of narcissism without saying it outright.
The myriad of experts, in unison, failed to consider that perhaps Bobby was simply ready to get the hell out of Lake County Jail at any cost before they unleashed their super important opinions to the media and to us, and yet none were so damaging as Feinberg School of Medicine Professor Lori Ann Post’s were.
The Chicago Tribune and Highland Park News reported the story on December 29th, 2023.
On January 5th, 2024, just one week later, Bobby had already made the (second) surprise decision to request that Judge Rossetti allow him to reappoint his public defenders.
But, the damage had already been done by Post. The weighted words “psychopathy and narcissism” aren’t easily forgotten - with or without the presence of counsel.
For her part in (further) prejudicing an already apoplectic pool of potential jurors, Dr. Post dug in her heels and refused to apologize, refused to retract, and refused to acknowledge her catastrophic mistake whatsoever. Northwestern University took the same approach, indicating in their silence that this irresponsible, unethical, uneducated, libelous, and detestable behavior is tolerated of its staff while pocketing upwards of $70,000 to $100,000 a year for tuition from its students.
Admitting your mistake is free.
So who is Dr. Lori Post and why is she - pardon the expression - under the gun?
SPOILER ALERT
That is Dr. Post, PhD - NOT Dr. Post, MD.
This woman has not been to medical school in any capacity. (No hate to my doctor of philosophy friends out there. It’s relevant here.)
Depending on who you ask and when, and where, your results will vary.
Dr. Post may be a geriatric medicine professor.
Dr. Post may be an author.
According to Google she is simply a researcher.
In peer reviewed journals, she is a researcher of [domestic] violence and injury prevention and of health informatics.
According to Dr. Post of the recent past, she’s a philanthropist of some kind.. Specific to Africa (?) I don’t know.
According to her LinkedIn, she is a Professor and a scholar of African development. ….but in 2023, when speaking to the media, she added a shiny new credential: gun violence and mass shooter researcher with decades of experience.
(Though this information did not appear on her LinkedIn profile, I was intrigued. I started scouring scholarly journals searching up her research because surely there would be much insight to offer after decades of study.. Right?)
Professionally, she currently holds the position of Buehler Professor for Aging and Geriatric Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. (Buehler is the medical school’s center for health policy and economics.)
In 1988 she graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelors in International Development, which is apparently a multidisciplinary degree that encompasses anthropology, geography, history, and African Studies.
In 1999 she earned her PhD in applied Demography/Sociology.
Her LinkedIn includes only three projects:
1. Mutual Accountability (research on economic foundations and mutual accountability and best practices)
2. Rural Economic Transformation(focus on Sub-Saharan Africa)
3. Uganda USAID Feed the Future
Nothing immediately jumped out of her CV about mass shooting research thus the hunt continued.
According to her Facebook page she is a 60 year old wife and mother, a Democratic gun control supporter, she favors big, kitschy glasses, and she seems to really like Hillary Clinton.
The qualifications to issue your Crimo statement though, madame? Where are they?
Personal Mental Health Struggles
In September of 2011, Post’s sister and brother-in-law were robbed and murdered in their home. The horrific incident left her struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, something she still openly discusses as recently as February 4, 2024 on her own Facebook page. She wrote about the incident in a journal titled Summer’s Death in 2015 and the murders were featured in an episode of Murder Comes to Town.
[excerpt]
My sister and her husband were murdered in their home in the middle of a sunny fall day in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. My pain was exacerbated when I learned how my sister and her husband were tortured before their murders. As a violence researcher, I know empirically that there is no way around this pain; however, to climb my way out of this dark posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) abyss, I focus on the positive and am developing policies to prevent batterers from having free reign in communities. Second, due to the violence, I experienced extreme feelings of shock, fear, and helplessness because somebody wanted my sister and her husband dead.
[source]
Expert Opinion on Covid and the Incarcerated
11.13.2020 - ABC7 Chicago reported that four Illinois prisons had suffered such severe Covid outbreaks that Illinois had tied with Texas for being most infected with the virus.
When asked to comment on the rapidly intensifying situation, Post offered groundbreaking insight:
"We're living in a hotspot so I would say that prisons that are next to high population, or of the highest population states, are going to have higher cases of COVID," adding that inmates are in a super high-risk position.
"They share showers, they share, you know, meals and they share where they sleep. So they have no way to social distance and they don't have any way to protect themselves."
[source]
(Note: She did not provide any recommendation, any resolution, or any helpful protocol to implement - as a Doctor of Philosophy in DEMOGRAPHY - in combating or alleviating the virus or the high risk environments in which the inmates were trapped.)
Contributing Author and Researcher: Impact of Firearm Surveillance and Gun Control Policy
2.19.2021 - In a peer reviewed journal we finally begin to see Post’s actual participation in shooting research, though this particular article does not qualify under the more tailored and personal umbrella of studying mass shooters themselves, as she would go on to claim only one month later.
According to the article, the objective was identified as:
The aim of this study was to determine if the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB) (1994-2004) reduced the number of public mass shootings while it was in place.
(Note: The study was conducted in favor of banning assault weapons.)
[source]
Expert Opinion: Mental health NOT related to mass shootings
3.24.2021 - Post appeared on a segment with WGN Chicago to soliloquy - “as a scholar of mass shootings back to the 1960s” - offering her professional opinion of mental health in relation to mass shootings and vehemently denying any correlation between the two.
Post believes mass shooters are mentally healthy individuals and that attributing the mental health epidemic to the uptick in mass shootings attaches an unnecessary stigma to mental illness that is patently untrue and leads to fear mongering.
She highlighted the three commonalities she has identified among mass shooters:
[who do these NOT sound like to any of you?]
1. Having prior criminal history/histories
2. Having noticeable anger issues
And, finally, the timing of the purchase of their weapons, stating,
3. “Mass shooters tend to pick up their assault rifles right at the very end, before the shooting happens.”
Regarding the theory that mental illness is germain to mass shootings she countered,“Mental illness does not, at all, play a role in mass shootings. People with mental health issues are not violent. People with mental health issues have a difficult time managing their own lives, maintaining their own personal hygiene.. and that’s not the same kind of person who can organize the purchase of an assault weapon.”
(Note: This is from a Professor of Medicine who has been struggling with PTSD since 2011.)
[source]
And, in response to the three commonalities, I would cross-examine Post’s direct with some questions of my own:
Is mental illness germain to criminal history, in your opinion?
How do you reconcile the number of incarcerated individuals with diagnosed Antisocial Personality Disorder and how that particular disorder lends to disregard for law resulting in frequent arrests?
Would that not, in itself, imply that mental illness could account for at least some of your first identified commonality trait?
How do you explain untreated Bipolar Disorder and the prevalence of manic individuals finding themselves hospitalized or in custody, or both?
Same question; but Schizophrenia with command hallucinations?
How about just good old psychosis? Psychopathy?
These things don’t apply?
Answer this one carefully, dear - they’re going to apply two years in the future, according to you.YOU, YOURSELF, have a mental illness. YOU broadcast it in your research and on your social media.
Are we to assume, based upon your own statements, that you, yourself, are unable to manage your life and your hygiene?Should you be holding the position of Professor of Medicine in that case?
Mental Health Diagnosis of Pretrial Detainee to the Chicago Tribune
12.29.2023 - Dr. Post provided her now polarizing statement in question identifying Bobby as psychopathic and narcissistic in the Top Stories of 2023 article, which reported on both Robert Crimo Jr. and Robert Crimo III’s legal battles.
With the full understanding of their cases being built upon a mass shooting, Dr. Lori Post effortlessly delivered not one, but *two* diagnoses of mental illness - contradicting her prior, vehement stance to the contrary.
Or, perhaps that she was insinuating that if, in fact, she believed Bobby to be the shooter, then she believed he was completely of sound mind at the time of the incident, only regressing into psychopathy and narcissism when he chose to represent himself pro se in court on the theory that his attorneys were ill equipped to present a proper defense for him.
Or, perhaps her imposter syndrome revealed itself then and there.
When previously she asserted a mass shooter is NOT a mentally ill individual - here she was, waving around her years of mass shooter research and concluding “psychopathy” and “narcissism” as if they were things she’d seen hundreds of times previous in these cases. Which is it?
This woman is completely full of shit.
When she chose to join the mob against Bobby she simultaneously sank all her credibility. Karma is a beautiful thing.
(Notes:
-Her few studies to date pertain to statistics and number analysis of violence and injury prevention, health informatics, and the effectiveness of gun control legislation.
-Her only interaction with the Crimos is through a television screen.
-She has no medical licensure and is entirely unqualified to make such a bold statement akin to diagnosing/practicing medicine without a license, impersonating a medical doctor, and violating multiple professional ethics and guidelines.
-Northwestern University’s lack of action seemingly implies it takes no issue with this, irrespective of Post being employed within its school of medicine and, the University also having a School of Law to its credit. $100k/year, everyone.)
The Stanford Study
In closing, I found a research project with similar parameters of those purported to have been studied by Post, except with the stark contrast of it being performed by an individual with the credentials Dr. Lori Post only pretends to have to laymen who don’t know better.
Stanford University Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Ira Glick, MD has studied mass shootings for decades. In tandem with Dr. Nina Cerfolio, MD, they realized relatively little research had been done into a collective of mass shooters and that most media reporting on the mental health of shooters was grossly inaccurate.
The study included 35 surviving shooters of incidents occurring between the years of 1982 and 2019.
In 2022, Investigating Psychiatric Illnesses of Mass Shooters was published to the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology and included the most comprehensive list of cases the team was able to find and parse.
The results concluded that:
- Enough data had been collected to diagnose 32 of the 35 studied.
- 28/35 met the diagnostic criteria of at least one psychiatric disorder.
- The most commonly diagnosed disorder, affecting 18/35 of the shooters, was Schizophrenia.
Other diagnoses included:
- Bipolar Disorder
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Well look at that, would you?)
- Substance Use Disorder
- Delusional Disorder
- Personality Disorder
** The Chicago Tribune article was originally posted by Chloe Hilles chilles@chicagotribune.com - 12.29.2023 at 1:42pm. Chloe did not respond to a request for comment or retraction.
I'm confident you don't have a lot of time, but you seriously need to consider going to law school.