A professor wrote to me today about some issues he had with the Cyclops column from Sunday.

First, he more generally noted that he thought that I had misapplied the diagnostic tool (the PCL-R), and that he was not much of a fan of the PCL-R in the first place, making the post doubly annoying.

But then, I feel, even more importantly, he said:

I don't normally send out critical emails about misapplied scientific concepts in comics or comics criticism. Hell, I'd probably lose my job if I went down that road. This case is a little bit more sensitive though. Neurodivergent folks and people suffering from mental or neurological disorders often have to deal with stigmatization, armchair diagnoses, and superficial treatment as a fact of life. That's kind of an obvious point, but I think it might indicate why casually dragging in something like the PCL-R might come across as flippant at best (and really hurtful at worst). I think that the topic is an interesting one, but I hope you might reconsider the approach.

Jay from Jay and Miles Xplain the X-Men also expressed similar concerns today on Twitter.

I do think that one could reasonably see the usage of the PCL-R in the column to "diagnose" Cyclops as trivializing mental health, and so I apologize for doing so. It was in poor form. I won't go into such territory again.