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Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature

Many autistic people (including researchers and non-researchers) are becoming increasingly involved in, and increasingly critical of, autism intervention research. They have expressed concerns regarding applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions on a number of grounds, one of which is the prevale...

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Autores principales: Bottema-Beutel, Kristen, Crowley, Shannon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131529/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34025538
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303
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author Bottema-Beutel, Kristen
Crowley, Shannon
author_facet Bottema-Beutel, Kristen
Crowley, Shannon
author_sort Bottema-Beutel, Kristen
collection PubMed
description Many autistic people (including researchers and non-researchers) are becoming increasingly involved in, and increasingly critical of, autism intervention research. They have expressed concerns regarding applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions on a number of grounds, one of which is the prevalence of conflicts of interests (COIs) among autism intervention researchers. These concerns are now also being addressed by non-autistic researchers. COIs can introduce bias into the research process, and allow researchers to demonstrate positive effects for interventions that are not actually effective. Despite these concerns, there are no studies to date that examine the prevalence of COIs in behavioral journals. Because ABA services are routinely provided to autistic people in the United States as a means to address difficulties experienced by autistic people, this is an important area of investigation. We tallied author COIs in articles published over a 1-year period that tested, commented on, or reviewed ABA autism intervention strategies, extracted from eight journals devoted to publishing behavioral research. We coded included studies for COIs related to researcher employment as an ABA clinical provider or a training consultant to ABA clinical providers. We found that 84% of studies had at least one author with this type of COI, but they were only disclosed as COIs in 2% of studies. Additionally, 87% of studies with statements claiming the authors did not have COIs, were authored by researchers found to have clinical/training consultancy COIs. Pervasive, undisclosed COIs likely lead to researcher bias, and could at least partially account for persistent poor quality research in this area. The high prevalence of COIs among this research corroborates the concerns expressed by many autistic people. The autism community – including autistic people, autism researchers, and other stakeholders – should be aware of the prevalence of undisclosed COIs in this literature and take this into account when using, providing, or recommending ABA services.
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spelling pubmed-81315292021-05-20 Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature Bottema-Beutel, Kristen Crowley, Shannon Front Psychol Psychology Many autistic people (including researchers and non-researchers) are becoming increasingly involved in, and increasingly critical of, autism intervention research. They have expressed concerns regarding applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions on a number of grounds, one of which is the prevalence of conflicts of interests (COIs) among autism intervention researchers. These concerns are now also being addressed by non-autistic researchers. COIs can introduce bias into the research process, and allow researchers to demonstrate positive effects for interventions that are not actually effective. Despite these concerns, there are no studies to date that examine the prevalence of COIs in behavioral journals. Because ABA services are routinely provided to autistic people in the United States as a means to address difficulties experienced by autistic people, this is an important area of investigation. We tallied author COIs in articles published over a 1-year period that tested, commented on, or reviewed ABA autism intervention strategies, extracted from eight journals devoted to publishing behavioral research. We coded included studies for COIs related to researcher employment as an ABA clinical provider or a training consultant to ABA clinical providers. We found that 84% of studies had at least one author with this type of COI, but they were only disclosed as COIs in 2% of studies. Additionally, 87% of studies with statements claiming the authors did not have COIs, were authored by researchers found to have clinical/training consultancy COIs. Pervasive, undisclosed COIs likely lead to researcher bias, and could at least partially account for persistent poor quality research in this area. The high prevalence of COIs among this research corroborates the concerns expressed by many autistic people. The autism community – including autistic people, autism researchers, and other stakeholders – should be aware of the prevalence of undisclosed COIs in this literature and take this into account when using, providing, or recommending ABA services. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8131529/ /pubmed/34025538 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303 Text en Copyright © 2021 Bottema-Beutel and Crowley. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Bottema-Beutel, Kristen
Crowley, Shannon
Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title_full Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title_fullStr Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title_full_unstemmed Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title_short Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature
title_sort pervasive undisclosed conflicts of interest in applied behavior analysis autism literature
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131529/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34025538
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303
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