Christine Blasey Ford's testimony combined her own analysis of the situation.

"Back to the incident," said Senator Patrick Leahy to Christine Blasey Ford on Thursday morning as she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "What is the strongest memory you have, the strongest memory of the incident, something you can not forget? Take all the time you need.

"Indelible in the seahorse, that's the laugh"Witnessed Ford," the shameful laughter between the two and their fun at my expense. "

For me, and perhaps for other viewers, this exchange on comedy of cruelty will be the hardest to forget Thursday's auditions. As Slate's Lili Loofbourow pointed out, several allegations of abuse against Brett Kavanaugh have been reminiscent of the sight of men joining men and humiliating women just to crash.

But this excerpt from Leahy-Ford remains for me in the way he exploits another current theme. Several times in answering Thursday morning's questions, Ford seemed to switch between two modes of describing his experience. In one of them, she told her story as a victim of aggression, her voice breaking as she made her way through the ugly details. In the other mode, she became an expert witness – a clinical psychologist who had analyzed and meta-analyzed her own experiences, finding their place in her brain. Indelible in the seahorse, that's the laughFord told Leahy, as if she was running through an MRI machine, and discovered that the central feature of her trauma – the laughter of her terrible boys at her expense – was lighting a piece of tissue in her inner temporal lobe.

There were several other times when Ford pulled back from its gross account of the events of the summer of 1982, and instead offered a processed version fit for academic publishing. She commented on "multifactorial etiologies" and "sequelae of sexual assault" and also referred to the hippocampus. Senator Dianne Feinstein asked how Ford was so certain – "100%", even – that Kavanaugh had been the one to climb on her? "Just basic memory functions," replied Ford, then added the corroborating science: "and also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain … which encodes the memories in the hippocampus . "

There have been other times when Ford has pulled back from its gross account of the events of the summer of 1982, and offered a version adapted for academic edition.

In another context – the testimony of an expert witness, for example – this type of neuro-conversation could be used to reinforce simple statements, so that they looked more like scientific facts. But when Ford played the role of expert on his own behalf, the goal was different. It was a bit odd to see these bloodless footnotes adding to a first-person narrative rending. If this procedure makes sense, it may be to give Ford a chance to give its own credibility – to tell its story in the Senate, face to face and under oath, so that its experience can not to be rejected. . As an eyewitness, she did just that, with ease and dignity. And then, in answering the questions that followed, she added a second level of speech, full of scientific jargon, that seemed to distance her from her trauma and her audience.

Yet Ford's calls to science served as a counterbalance to the public discourse in which she was forced to play the victim. As a researcher, Ford has studied different ways in which people respond to trauma and abuse: others exhibit post-traumatic growth and end up being more robust than when they started; and the rest – like Ford – remains afflicted with sequelae, suffering from depression, phobias, PTSD or other lasting injuries. I suspect that mastery of this science can not make suffering less severe – but it could provide a solid foundation from which to study and understand a psychological seismic event. It was perhaps important for Ford to find this base and to share this expertise, even though she shared the details of her attempted rape.

Ford is, besides a clinical psychologist, biostatistician and research methodologist. This means that she is studying how one could better gather disorderly facts on an issue and draw credible conclusions. This topic could not be more relevant for Thursday's deliberations. Indeed, Ford's 2016 book begins with a discussion of how researchers should strike a balance between the potential costs and benefits of any type of investigation, particularly when these surveys are conducted on human subjects. At this hearing, Ford said very clearly that this same idea had come to him in recent months: "I calculated the benefit / risk ratio for me to introduce myself," she told Feinstein. in front of a train that was heading where it was heading anyway, and that I would just be annihilated personally.

Another revealing reference to her scientific work came when Rachel Mitchell, the GOP's proxy questioner, asked Ford if anything other than sexual assault had contributed to her anxiety and post-traumatic stress. "I think it's a great question. I think the etiology of anxiety and PTSD is multifactorial, "replied Mr. Ford, again in jargon. "We consider this to be a risk factor, so this could be attributable to the symptoms I have now." In a way, the most revealing word of this answer is we, a sin we psychologists, and we, the experts on the subject of this hearing. Although she testified for the Congress, Ford was both a scientist and an eyewitness.

As a scientist, Ford weighed the risks and benefits of public advertising and tried to find a balanced path. As a scientist, she evaluated both the hearing process – its methodology and scope – and the nature of the evidence it could provide. The rest of us have tended to assume that what happened Thursday is all about appearances: How is Ford doing? What about Kavanaugh? Who asks the questions and what tone is taken? Yet, Ford said it thought that several other areas of research might be more relevant than optics. She knows she has volunteered to be part of this study, but that does not mean she will not be the author.