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Correcting the scientific record on abortion and mental health outcomes

BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-076518 (Published 27 February 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:e076518
  1. Julia H Littell, professor emerita1,
  2. Kathryn M Abel, professor2,
  3. M Antonia Biggs, associate professor3,
  4. Robert W Blum, professor4,
  5. Diana Greene Foster, professor3,
  6. Lisa B Haddad, medical director5,
  7. Brenda Major, distinguished professor6,
  8. Trine Munk-Olsen, professor78,
  9. Chelsea B Polis, senior scientist59,
  10. Gail Erlick Robinson, professor10,
  11. Corinne H Rocca, professor3,
  12. Nancy Felipe Russo, regents professor emerita11,
  13. Julia R Steinberg, associate professor12,
  14. Donna E Stewart, university professor1314,
  15. Nada Logan Stotland, professor15,
  16. Ushma D Upadhyay, professor3,
  17. Jenneke van Ditzhuijzen, assistant professor1617
  1. 1Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA
  2. 2Centre for Women’s Mental Health, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
  3. 3Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, Oakland, CA, USA
  4. 4Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
  5. 5Center for Biomedical Research, Population Council, New York, NY, USA
  6. 6Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
  7. 7Department of Clinical Research (Research Unit for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry), University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
  8. 8The National Center for Register-based Research, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  9. 9Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
  10. 10Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  11. 11Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
  12. 12Department of Family Science, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
  13. 13Departments of Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medicine, Surgery, Anesthesiology, Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  14. 14Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, Toronto, Canada
  15. 15Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Rush Medical Center, Rush University, Chicago, IL, USA
  16. 16Interdisciplinary Social Science: Social Policy and Public Health, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
  17. 17Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to: J H Littell jlittell{at}brynmawr.edu

Julia Littell and colleagues argue that better adherence to ethical standards for correction or retraction of unreliable publications is essential to avoid harmful effects on public policy, clinical practice, and public health

The scientific community has contended with unreliable research for decades.12 Ideally, fatally flawed studies will be detected by peer reviewers and rejected by journal editors, but these processes are subjective, varied, and susceptible to error.34 Post-publication critiques can identify important flaws, and public debate can shed light on the nature of these problems, but these actions do not correct the scientific record. Thus, when authors are unwilling or unable to make sufficient corrections, published papers occasionally have to be retracted to correct the scientific record.

Standards for correction and retraction have been established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),56 the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE),7 and editors’ professional associations, including the Council of Science Editors, World Association of Medical Editors, and European Association of Science Editors. These organisations provide guidance on best practices for science editors and journals. However, problematic science continues to remain uncorrected. The importance of correcting the scientific record has been highlighted by the use of four unreliable studies on the mental health outcomes of abortion in US court cases that have restricted access to abortion.

Four abortion studies

In 2002, The BMJ published a cohort study concluding that the risk of depression was higher in women who had an abortion compared with those who continued an unwanted first pregnancy.8 Independent re-analysis of the same data found that this study incorrectly identified unwanted first pregnancies and did not control for pre-pregnancy levels of depression, and after correction of these errors abortion was not associated with increased risk of subsequent maternal depression.9The BMJ published criticism of …

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