The retraction of three peer-reviewed papers featured in court cases about the so-called abortion pill (mifepristone) has brought a group of papers by anti-abortion researchers into the spotlight of scholarly attention.
Seventeen sexual and reproductive health researchers are calling for the retraction or modification of four peer-reviewed studies by anti-abortion researchers. Critics claim the papers are “fatally flawed” and cloud scientific consensus for courts and lawmakers who lack the scientific training to understand their methodological flaws.
Relating to: How right-wing groups used junk science to bring abortion cases to the US supreme court
Although some articles date back to 2002, the group argues the stakes have never been higher in the post-Roe v Wade era. State and federal courts now routinely file lawsuits over near-total bans on abortion, attacks on in vitro fertilization, and attempts to grant human rights to fetuses.
“Concerns really rose when we saw the meta-analysis repeatedly presented in the Dobbs case briefs that overturned Roe v Wade and state lawsuits restricting abortion,” said Julia Littell, a retired Bryn Mawr professor and social researcher with expertise in statistical analysis.
Meta-analysis is a type of research that uses statistical methods to combine studies on the same topic. Researchers sometimes use these analyzes to examine the scientific consensus on a topic.
Littell was “shocked” by an article stating that women experience dramatic increases in mental health problems after abortion; The main reason for this was the research methods of the article.
Of the 22 studies cited in the meta-analysis, 11 were conducted by the sole author of the article. According to a review published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the meta-analysis “failed to meet any published methodological criteria for systematic reviews” and failed to follow recommendations to avoid statistical dependencies.
Major scientific organizations have found no evidence to suggest that abortion causes increased mental health problems. The best indicator of a woman’s post-abortion mental health is her pre-abortion health status. Moreover, there is significant evidence that women who are denied voluntary abortions suffer both mental and financial harm.
This 2011 meta-analysis caused consternation from the moment it was published. Still, there is a disagreement in the scientific record that the 17 authors of the BMJ review, including Littell, say goes beyond mere scientific disagreement.
The article was cited in at least 24 federal and state court cases and 14 parliamentary hearings in six countries.
Dr. D., a reproductive health scientist in New York who helped convene the group of academics. Chelsea Polis says her “concerns about the published meta-analysis on abortion and mental health…are based on the fact that, in my professional opinion, it is highly methodological.” defective”.
The researcher who wrote the paper, Priscilla Coleman, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, responded to calls for a retraction with legal threats and conspiratorial statements. He said calls for a retraction were “an organized effort to cull professional literature and remove studies showing that abortion increases the risk of mental health problems and affects the legal status of abortion.”
Since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion and allowed 21 states to severely restrict or ban abortion, a series of recusals and investigations show how the scientific community is slowly beginning to reevaluate the studies cited in these cases.
“We’re seeing allegations with legal force behind it, and that’s causing people to look at this research from a different perspective,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and legal expert at the University of California Davis. breeding history.
The second author whose work has been at the center of BMJ criticism is David C Reardon, a long-time opponent of abortion. A study by Reardon published in the BMJ in 2002 is currently under investigation.
The BMJ said in a statement that “the matter remains under review by our research integrity team” and that the final decision “will be made public once we have completed our internal process.”
Reardon trained as an engineer but found his calling in research claiming a link between abortion and poor mental health. To pursue this research, she founded the Elliot Institute, an anti-abortion nonprofit organization in Illinois.
Today, Reardon is affiliated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, funded by Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion campaigning organizations in the United States. Reardon also co-authored two articles that were retracted before the high court hearings; both were written by a colleague from the Lozier Institute. Reardon did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The science is not controversial, according to analyzes of the literature and experts like Julia Steinberg, an associate professor of family science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and co-author of a recent review of these studies in the BMJ. According to a 2011 analysis by the UK’s National Collaborating Center on Mental Health, “women with unwanted pregnancies had the same rates of mental health problems whether they had an abortion or gave birth.” by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in its own 2018 review of the subject.
Other reviews, such as one by the American Psychological Association in 2009, found evidence that “does not support the claim that observed associations between abortion and mental health problems are due to abortion itself.”
Relating to: How abortion pill case at Supreme Court could undo FDA
“One can be pro-abortion, pro-abortion or anti-abortion, but still understand what the science says about abortion and mental health,” Steinberg said.
While issues of scientific integrity may seem academic, they can have concrete impacts on policies in the post-Roe United States.
One of the few cases of scientific retraction that received wider publicity was in Texas; Here, a federal court relied heavily on two studies in its decision to invalidate approval of mifepristone, better known as the “abortion pill.”
The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was heard at oral arguments between the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and the FDA in March. Just weeks before the justices were to hear the case, and with nearly the entire scientific community shouting “junk science” at its core, the heavily cited studies were retracted by Sage Publications. Still, the article’s claims remained in brief before the court and were cited as evidence by Samuel Alito, one of the most conservative justices.
Like Reardon, Coleman had a recent article retracted; this was in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022. The magazine publicly said the article “did not meet publication standards.” It is noteworthy that one of the reviewers of the paper also worked at the Lozier Institute. Coleman unsuccessfully sued the magazine over the retraction decision. Frontiers told the Guardian the court ruled against Coleman in March 2023.
Coleman’s 2011 meta-analysis, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, also became involved in a heated battle for withdrawal in the United Kingdom. The first calls for the paper to be retracted came soon after it was published in 2012.
He was brought before the journal editors again in 2022 after the BJP formed a research integrity group. “Motivated by a strong consensus on the importance of scientific integrity, I led a group of 16 academics to summarize our concerns about the Coleman meta-analysis and present it to the BJP,” Polis said.
In response to these concerns, the BJP set up an independent expert panel to investigate. The panel recommended that Coleman’s article be retracted, but the recommendation was rejected by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the professional body that publishes the BJP. The move led to the resignation of independent board members and some editorial board members.
In the report later published in the BMJ, panel members said they believed the university had refused to recuse itself because they lacked comprehensive legal protection in the United States. According to letters obtained by the BBC, Coleman twice threatened to sue.
Although Coleman denied that his legal threats contributed to the BJP’s decision not to withdraw his work, he said the help of lawyers was important in defending his work.
“I have spent the last two years vigorously defending three of my own articles, and without the financial means to hire highly competent lawyers and the time and opportunity to write lengthy rebuttals, the impact could have been very damaging,” Coleman said.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists responded to the Guardian’s questions by sending a statement dated 2023 about its decision. That statement read in part: “After careful review, given the time that has elapsed since the original article was published, the widely available public debate about the paper, including letters of complaint already available online with the article, and the article’s Article “Since it is already subject to a comprehensive investigation, it has been decided to reject the request to withdraw the article.” The statement included the following statements: “We now consider this issue to be closed.”
Coleman has also defended his work while testifying in US courts, including the Michigan trial, where he said his work was “not retracted”.
“That’s what’s really frustrating,” Steinberg said.
He added that Coleman “didn’t even have to admit he made a mistake.”
Relating to: ‘How sick do they need to be?’ Doctors prepare for US Supreme Court hearing on emergency abortion
The researchers also called for the retraction of a 2009 paper by Coleman and anti-abortion activists Catherine Coyle and Vincent Rue in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. This article, too, has been under fire and even publicly debunked for years.
Despite the apparent flaws, Coleman included this 2009 article in his meta-analysis; Critics say this increases errors.
Additionally, authors of the BMJ review called for expressions of concern in a 2005 paper by Coleman, Reardon, and Florida State University psychology professor Jesse Cougle published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
Ivan Oransky, one of the founders of the Retraction Watch blog, said that although retractions are becoming more common, they are not common enough to correct the scientific record. About one in 500 articles is retracted today, but perhaps one in 50 should be retracted, he said.
“All it does is call into further question the value that these multibillion-dollar publishing companies add,” Oransky said. For critics of the scholarly publishing industry like Oransky, this response suggests that flawed studies cited by courts are a “symptom” of problems with publishers rather than a failure of the courts.
To Littell, the solution is obvious: “We really need to publish fewer papers, we need better work, we need better science.”