Psychology

Indictment

Task (project management)

Psychiatry

Economics

Intervention (counseling)

Autism

Political science

Management

Applied behavior analysis

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Bottema‐Beutel, Crowley, Sandbank, and Woynaroski ( Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2020) have performed a Herculean and invaluable task in their investigation of conflicts of interest (COIs) in nonpharmacological early autism intervention research. Drawing on a meta‐analysis of 150 articles reporting group designs, they found COIs in 105 (70%), only 6 (5.7%) of which had fully accurate COI statements. Most reports had no COI statements, but among the 48 (32%) which did, the majority of those declaring no COIs had detectable COIs (23 of 30; 77%). Thus, COI reporting in the literature examined is routinely missing, misleading, and/or incomplete; accurate reporting is the exception rather than the rule. That 120 of the 150 reports were published in 2010 or later, compared to 6 pre‐2000, tells us this is not about practices confined to decades past. Instead, it reflects and is a telling indictment of established standards in autism intervention research.

Commentary: What conflicts of interest tell us about autism intervention research—a commentary on Bottema‐Beutel et al. (2020)