Pervasive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Applied Behavior Analysis Autism Literature.
Most ABA autism studies hide money ties—look past the abstract before you act.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bottema-Beutel et al. (2021) read every ABA autism paper published in one year. They checked who paid the authors and who sold the training.
They hunted for conflicts of interest that authors never told readers. A conflict means money or status that could sway the results.
What they found
Eighty-four percent of the papers hid at least one clinical or training conflict. Most studies looked clean, but the ties were missing from the print.
The hidden links were grants, clinic jobs, and paid workshops. Readers could not see who gained if the intervention won.
How this fits with other research
Sandbank et al. (2021) warn that close, narrow outcomes can make weak look strong. Add hidden money and the picture gets even fuzzier.
Bellon-Harn et al. (2020) show that autism content on YouTube already fails clarity tests. Bottema-Beutel’s audit says the journal side has trust gaps too.
Aldakhil et al. (2025) find scant proof for misophonia care in autism. Their call for better trials lands harder when four in five past papers may be tilted.
Why it matters
Before you bet your clinical time on a new protocol, flip to the conflict line. If it is blank, treat the numbers like a used-car ad: check under the hood. Ask who runs the clinic, who trains the course, and who keeps the data. Your clients deserve choices free from silent sales pitches.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a two-minute COI check to your article skims—no clean statement, no instant trust.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Many autistic people (including researchers and non-researchers) are becoming increasingly involved in, and increasingly critical of, autism intervention research. They have expressed concerns regarding applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions on a number of grounds, one of which is the prevalence of conflicts of interests (COIs) among autism intervention researchers. These concerns are now also being addressed by non-autistic researchers. COIs can introduce bias into the research process, and allow researchers to demonstrate positive effects for interventions that are not actually effective. Despite these concerns, there are no studies to date that examine the prevalence of COIs in behavioral journals. Because ABA services are routinely provided to autistic people in the United States as a means to address difficulties experienced by autistic people, this is an important area of investigation. We tallied author COIs in articles published over a 1-year period that tested, commented on, or reviewed ABA autism intervention strategies, extracted from eight journals devoted to publishing behavioral research. We coded included studies for COIs related to researcher employment as an ABA clinical provider or a training consultant to ABA clinical providers. We found that 84% of studies had at least one author with this type of COI, but they were only disclosed as COIs in 2% of studies. Additionally, 87% of studies with statements claiming the authors did not have COIs, were authored by researchers found to have clinical/training consultancy COIs. Pervasive, undisclosed COIs likely lead to researcher bias, and could at least partially account for persistent poor quality research in this area. The high prevalence of COIs among this research corroborates the concerns expressed by many autistic people. The autism community – including autistic people, autism researchers, and other stakeholders – should be aware of the prevalence of undisclosed COIs in this literature and take this into account when using, providing, or recommending ABA services.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021 · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303