I can’t find a discussion of the methodological problems with the systematic review. Anyone? There is a very simple way of challenging the paper. Rerun the review and publish the results.
Peer reviewed research can produce inconvenient results. Their inconvenience is not good reason to have that work retracted.
There will be thousands of people giving their opinions about this topic. Very few of them will be research psychologists and psychiatrists that have read the paper. Those are the only people whose opinions matter.
I’m not sure what purpose retraction of the paper serves, regardless of whether or not the methodology is unsound. It could conceivably be counter-productive. Immense harm was caused by Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense MMR/autism paper, which the Lancet eventually retracted (correctly, because Wakefield was found to be in a position to profit from the outcome of his deeply and deliberately flawed “research”) but the retraction seemingly did little to change the minds of people whose minds were made up. His work is still cited more than 20 years later by anti-vaxxers and he became both a martyr and a figurehead for the movement.
This research is a little bit of glitter sprinkled over the turd that was the SCOTUS’ decision to overturn *Roe vs Wade*. They aren’t going to backtrack on their decision if somebody (especially mental health professionals from thousands of miles away) tells them it was a load of old cobblers, because their decision was not based on evidence but rather ideology. Right wing American conservatives think life begins at conception and they don’t really give a monkeys about the mental health of women who want an abortion.
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>…the row risked undermining confidence in the journal’s ability to “police the content that it publishes”
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An example of the Streisand Effect in action.
The author of that paper was deemed a ‘not credible’ witness in an Ohio court. There are numerous criticisms of her methodology and she’s had papers retracted before.
And then she makes legal threats… surely any decent scientist welcomes scrutiny? It can’t be good for science if a scientist threatening to sue can prevent a retraction.
4 comments
I can’t find a discussion of the methodological problems with the systematic review. Anyone? There is a very simple way of challenging the paper. Rerun the review and publish the results.
Peer reviewed research can produce inconvenient results. Their inconvenience is not good reason to have that work retracted.
There will be thousands of people giving their opinions about this topic. Very few of them will be research psychologists and psychiatrists that have read the paper. Those are the only people whose opinions matter.
I’m not sure what purpose retraction of the paper serves, regardless of whether or not the methodology is unsound. It could conceivably be counter-productive. Immense harm was caused by Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense MMR/autism paper, which the Lancet eventually retracted (correctly, because Wakefield was found to be in a position to profit from the outcome of his deeply and deliberately flawed “research”) but the retraction seemingly did little to change the minds of people whose minds were made up. His work is still cited more than 20 years later by anti-vaxxers and he became both a martyr and a figurehead for the movement.
This research is a little bit of glitter sprinkled over the turd that was the SCOTUS’ decision to overturn *Roe vs Wade*. They aren’t going to backtrack on their decision if somebody (especially mental health professionals from thousands of miles away) tells them it was a load of old cobblers, because their decision was not based on evidence but rather ideology. Right wing American conservatives think life begins at conception and they don’t really give a monkeys about the mental health of women who want an abortion.
​
>…the row risked undermining confidence in the journal’s ability to “police the content that it publishes”
​
An example of the Streisand Effect in action.
The author of that paper was deemed a ‘not credible’ witness in an Ohio court. There are numerous criticisms of her methodology and she’s had papers retracted before.
And then she makes legal threats… surely any decent scientist welcomes scrutiny? It can’t be good for science if a scientist threatening to sue can prevent a retraction.