A Review of Behavior-Analytic Articles that Cite a Source of Misinformation about ABA

The misinformation that originated from the Wakefield et al. (1998, The Lancet, 351(9103), 637-641) paper that claimed vaccines cause autism exemplifies the lasting negative impact that unsubstantiated claims about health and human service practices can have on society. As the profession of behavior analysis has grown and developed, the amount of misinformation about it has increased. One such source of misinformation about behavior analysis is a paper by Kupferstein (2018, Advances in Autism, 4(1), 19-29), which suggested that applied behavior analysis causes post-traumatic stress disorder in individuals with autism. The purpose of the current paper was to evaluate the way that behavior-analytic publications discuss sources of misinformation about applied behavior analysis by reviewing the way that Kupferstein (2018) has been referred to in behavior-analytic publications. We identified and coded papers published in behavior-analytic journals based on the way that they cited Kupferstein (2018). The results of the review indicate that Kupferstein (2018) has been cited in behavior-analytic journals as (a) a source of misinformation about applied behavior analysis, (b) a critique of applied behavior analysis with a caveat, and (c) a critique of applied behavior analysis without a caveat.