Moran et al deserve praise for their large-scale study of school-children that combines parental assessments of psychopathology with teacher assessments of emotional traits. ^{Reference Moran, Ford, Butler and Goodman1} Opportunities for (unspecified) early intervention to prevent antisocial behaviour seem a worthy focus for community research, although I am not sure how many schoolchildren would welcome their label ‘fledgling psychopaths’.

One aspect of their pioneering report did raise alarm at the population health level. The new questionnaire showed greater ‘callous and unemotional’ ratings for subgroups with ‘Black and minority ethnicity’. ^{Reference Moran, Ford, Butler and Goodman1} All seven items scored could have very different norms within different cultural or religious traditions; for example, my formative years were in India and when I read the item ‘shallow or fast-changing emotions’ I prejudicially translated that as ‘British’. The research findings may be especially open to unconscious prejudice where the teacher and the child grew up in different ethnic-cultural groups. There is not room here to discuss US transcultural debates (such as whether the term ‘rascal’ is specifically overapplied by White adults to African–American children), but consider the questionnaire item ‘too full of his/her own abilities’. My personal view from work with youth offending teams ^{Reference McKay and Caan2} and Health of Looked After Children and Young People ^{Reference Caan and Dunnett3} is that the difficulties (adult) professionals have in comprehending the needs of young people are greatly amplified if a cultural misunderstanding is also present.

Moran et al recognise that they need to know more about the properties of their ‘callous and unemotional trait scale’, and since the Royal College of Psychiatrists has a valuable special interest group in transcultural psychiatry it could be timely to seek their expert advice before targeting too many young ‘fledgling psychopaths’.