Are Brazilian Behavior Analysts Publishing Outside the Box? A Survey of General Science Media

The team read every article in two big Brazilian science magazines from 2003 to 2014.

They counted how many pieces talked about behavior analysis and how they talked about it.

They also counted psychoanalytic articles to see the difference.

Only 13 articles mentioned behavior analysis. Psychoanalysis had 150.

When behavior analysis did appear, the magazines often got the ideas wrong.

The field was almost invisible to the public.

Blydenburg et al. (2016) asked training directors what their programs miss. Directors said they skip basic research skills. Poor training in sharing science may help explain the media silence.

Malott (2018) offers a fix: teach practitioners to write short, clear summaries for non-experts. That advice lines up with the need shown here.

DiGennaro Reed et al. (2016) counted how often OBM papers cite basic principles. Just over half do. Together these studies show a pattern: behavior analysts keep their work inside the club, not in the public eye.

If magazines rarely cover us and then mangle the message, parents, teachers, and funders will not know what we do. You can change that. Write a 300-word lay summary after your next study and pitch it to a local science blog, school newsletter, or newspaper. One short article can reach thousands and fix the gap this survey revealed.