OP,

Your responses have been constructed well and present themselves as very articulate. But! I think your perspective of the Ramsey’s “brazen cockiness” in interviews is just another example of how easy it is to try and take a grey piece of information and turn it in to something that is either black or white.

Even intelligent people are capable of doing things that we believe to be inconceivable. For instance; I am a behavioral therapist and work for a family of nurses and doctors. Their child’s severe self injurious behavior increased for a two week time span. I spoke with the parents several times about taking their child to a doctor to check for potential health issues, as we had no antecedent to any of the self injurious behaviors, but they refused. The parents and Grandmother—all doctors+nurses—refused to take him to the doctor because, well, they thought they were capable. Turns out, during a routine check up a few weeks later, the doctor identified a massive ear infection in one ear while the other ear had green fungus growing inside of it. Oh! And the client’s molars were coming in. Tell me again whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy these intelligent people let it get that bad? Especially as practitioners? Now THATS inconceivable. But it sure as shit happened.

So, here’s the tie in:

1. Those parents, at the time, were violating some ethical guidelines. That means that not one, not two, but THREE guardians were doing some questionable practices. These same parents were competent individuals also; totally aware of possible consequences. Now, in the case of the Ramsey’s...if we’re speaking of the BDI theory...perhaps doing the interviews and creating a cover up scheme were actions they were willing to take the consequences for if it meant protecting their last living child. I can’t say I’m either BDI or RDI but I know I’m not IDI. I genuinely think the interviews were given to create dissension between media, BPD, and anyone else trying to get their hands on the evidence. I think they did it to help the IDI narrative along while simultaneously confusing the RDI theories floating around at the time. Total clusterfuck, sure, but why not share the information in a fitting smoke and mirrors type of way?

TL:DR; You’d be surprised. Intelligent people are capable of engaging in some of the most inconceivable and completely confusing behaviors. Just because they’re intelligent doesn’t mean that they’re above it.