A Review of the "Review": How the ABA Industry Uses Peer-Reviewed Journals to Police Dissent
When peer review becomes reputation management: a critical look at how ABA defends itself from autistic critique instead of facing the truths it most needs to hear.
This article examines how Morris et al. (2025) uses the form of peer review to police dissent, revealing how closed systems like ABA regulate critique to protect reputation rather than engage with ethical inquiry.
Introduction
Recently, I came across a paper titled “A Review of Behavior-Analytic Articles that Cite a Source of Misinformation about ABA,” published in a special issue of Behavior Analysis in Practice. The title alone gave me pause—particularly the framing of “misinformation.” It’s a word that does a lot of heavy lifting these days, often used to silence, dismiss, or delegitimise.
Morris, C., Morris, D.B., Ferrucci, B.J. et al. A Review of Behavior-Analytic Articles that Cite a Source of Misinformation about ABA. Behav Analysis Practice (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-025-01061-0
I read the piece closely—not just because I care about rigour in research, but because I care about what passes for rigour in behaviour analysis, a field with a long and troubled history when it comes to autistic lives. This wasn’t just an academic curiosity. It was personal. As an autistic person, a researcher, and someone who has both experienced and interrogated systems of behavioural control, I wanted to understand exactly what this article was doing—both on the surface and underneath it.
The paper is not a review of scholarship. It is a review of a performance—an attempt by industry insiders to police dissent within their own ranks, wrapped in the aesthetic of peer-reviewed science. What follows is my analysis of how the article functions, what it reveals about the ABA industry’s relationship to critique, and why we need to be deeply sceptical when peer-reviewed journals begin to resemble brand management handbooks.
Context – Who Wrote This and Where?
he lead author of the paper is Cody Morris, a behaviour analyst and regular contributor to Behavior Analysis in Practice—a journal closely aligned with the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). His academic home is squarely within the ABA ecosystem, and his publication record reflects a commitment to advancing the field from within, not interrogating it from the outside.
The remaining co-authors are graduate students or early-career practitioners in behaviour analysis. None are independent scholars. None, to the best of my knowledge, are autistic. And none appear to be positioned to offer a critical or alternative perspective on the very system they are evaluating.
The journal itself, Behavior Analysis in Practice, is published under the ABAI umbrella. This matters. This is not an interdisciplinary outlet. It is a trade journal dressed in academic robes, where practitioners evaluate their own methods, for their own audience, using their own rules.
In short: this is the field reviewing itself, in its own house, by its own standards. And if that sounds like a conflict of interest—it is.
Framing the Premise
The stated goal of Morris et al. (2025) is to review how other behaviour-analytic articles cite Kupferstein (2018), a study that reported PTSD symptoms in autistic people following exposure to ABA. But the framing is flawed from the outset.
Rather than examining the citations neutrally, the authors begin by pre-emptively declaring Kupferstein’s work to be “misinformation.” This is not a conclusion drawn from new analysis—it’s an assumption baked into the premise. And their sole justification for this designation? A 2018 rebuttal by Leaf et al., themselves entrenched figures in the ABA establishment. That’s not independent peer review; that’s industry defending itself.
I’m familiar with Kupferstein’s work and have previously reviewed her methodological framework—Able Grounded Phenomenology (AGP)—which is rooted in autistic epistemologies. You can read that piece here: Able Grounded Phenomenology: Ethical Research Starts with Autistic Lives. AGP is not a study, but (IMHO) a principled approach to research that centres autistic perspectives. Whether or not one agrees with every application of her methods, it is disingenuous to dismiss this body of work outright as “misinformation” simply because it challenges the dominant narrative. That’s not scientific discourse—it’s reputational control.
What follows in the paper is not an open inquiry, but an exercise in alignment. Other scholars are effectively scored on how well they conform to this predetermined framing. It’s a loyalty check, not a literature review.
The Circular Logic at the Heart of It
Morris et al. (2025) start by defining Kupferstein (2018) as “misinformation,” relying entirely on Leaf et al. (2018) to do so. They offer no independent analysis, no new critique, and no engagement with the substance of the claims. Once this definition is set, they proceed to score other authors based on whether they mirror this framing.
The hypocrisy is glaring. The paper criticises researchers who cite Kupferstein without critical distance—whilst simultaneously citing Leaf et al. without a whisper of scepticism. One source is treated as irredeemably tainted; the other as unimpeachably correct. No interrogation. No reflection.
This is not a scholarly review. It is circular, ideological enforcement masquerading as scientific assessment. It polices not the evidence, but the attitude towards the evidence—demanding loyalty to an official narrative rather than engagement with the complexities of autistic experience.
The Sample – 10 Articles from Their Own Bubble
Morris et al. (2025) base their entire analysis on just 10 articles, all drawn from behaviour-analytic journals closely tied to ABAI. Every paper comes from within the same professional ecosystem—no independent journals, no interdisciplinary perspectives, no autistic-led research.
This is not a broad literature review. It is ABA insiders reviewing other ABA insiders. It is a self-referential exercise where the boundaries of inquiry are defined by loyalty to the field, not by the pursuit of truth.
As someone who has authored and taught the course, Statistics for Forensic Analysts, I know how critical sample size and sampling integrity are. In forensic science, we are trained to spot when small, biased samples are used to prop up pre-decided conclusions—a problem I have discussed in detail elsewhere (here, here, and here). When a sample is this narrow, and this insular, it can’t support general claims about the broader discourse.
This isn’t a review. It’s a loyalty audit. A survey of who is sufficiently obedient to the authorised narrative—and who, even mildly, deviates.
Author Credentials – Who Gets to Call It “Misinformation?”
It’s worth pausing to consider who is doing the gatekeeping here. Cody Morris, the lead author, earned his doctorate with a dissertation focused on a component analysis of a single electronic data collection tool used within behaviour analysis practice. It was a technical, practice-oriented project—not an exercise in critical inquiry, nor an exploration of systemic ethics or epistemology.
This raises a serious question: how does someone trained primarily to deliver a service become the arbiter of what constitutes misinformation about that service? There is a fundamental difference between implementing a methodology and interrogating its ethical, social, and epistemic foundations.
And this is not incidental. The field of behaviour analysis trains practitioners to implement, not to question. Critical reflexivity—the cornerstone of genuine scientific progress—is absent from their formation. Yet here we are, watching a practitioner-led team attempt to police the boundaries of acceptable discourse under the banner of scholarship.
In any other context, we would call this what it is: a professional class defending its economic and ideological interests.
The Tone – Marketing Copy in Citation Drag
The paper closes not with reflection, but with a call to action: behaviour analysts must make a “concerted effort” to counter sources of “misinformation.” The language shifts decisively from analysis to strategy—from describing the problem to directing professional behaviour.
This does not read like the conclusion to a scholarly review. It reads like a brand management memo: rally the field, protect the product, stay on message.
It ties directly back to a pattern I’ve criticised elsewhere: native advertising posing as academic work. The surface form is familiar—citations, abstract, formal language—but the underlying purpose is reputational defence. It’s not about fostering inquiry or improving practice. It’s about safeguarding ABA’s public image against critical voices, particularly those rising from autistic communities themselves.
In short, this is not research. It’s reputation management in citation drag.
What Peer Review Should Be – In Contrast
When I wrote my own article on peer review—An Inside Look at Peer Review: The Science and the Struggle—I didn’t set out to defend a field or silence dissent. I set out to examine the process honestly: to show what good peer review could and should be, and to demonstrate that integrity demands openness, not allegiance.
In that piece, I exposed my own process—warts and all. I described where I wrestled with bias, where I asked for second opinions, where I challenged my own assumptions. I made it clear that peer review is not about protecting reputations or gatekeeping who is “in” or “out” of a professional club. It is about holding inquiry to a higher standard—one grounded in humility, accountability, and transparency.
That openness is what’s missing from Morris et al. (2025).
Instead, what we see in their paper is a closed, defensive, self-referential posture:
They assume their field is above reproach.
They position dissent not as an opportunity for growth, but as a threat to be neutralised.
They police others’ citations to enforce ideological conformity, not to broaden or deepen understanding.
This is precisely the opposite of what real peer review demands.
True peer review must include:
Positional Awareness: Every reviewer—and every author—brings their own positionality to the work. We are shaped by our training, our experiences, and the systems that benefit from our silence. To pretend otherwise is to pretend objectivity where none exists. In the case of Morris et al., five of the six authors are affiliated with the same academic institution, and the sixth shares the Morris surname—possibly a relative, though this is not disclosed. There is no acknowledgment that the authors are reviewing critiques of ABA whilst being professionally, academically, and quite possibly personally invested in its preservation. That silence speaks volumes.
Willingness to Sit with Discomfort: Good peer review doesn’t just confirm what we already believe. It challenges us. It forces us to ask hard questions about our methods, our assumptions, our blind spots. Kupferstein’s work—whether one agrees with its methodology or not—raises painful, necessary questions about trauma and consent within ABA practice. A true scholarly engagement would have grappled with those questions, not summarily dismissed them as “misinformation” on procedural grounds.
Engagement with Voices Outside the Field: A closed system cannot police itself ethically. When the only acceptable voices are those already trained within the system, the system becomes self-sealing. In my own career, I served two terms on the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science—a body tasked with reviewing evidence standards. What made OSAC credible was its structure: it deliberately included a cross-section of stakeholders. Scientists, practitioners, legal experts, ethicists, and public representatives all had a seat at the table. It wasn’t perfect, but it recognised that methodologies affect people beyond those who deliver them, and that accountability demands input from those impacted.
The ABA space, by contrast, shows little such awareness. The authors of this review speak only from within the practice. They do not seek out those harmed by it. They do not engage with critical scholarship. They do not invite discomfort. Real peer review must do all of these things. It must actively seek out voices that disrupt the consensus, especially when the consensus has been shaped to exclude those most affected.
Autistic people must be part of the conversation about ABA—not simply referenced to tick a box, but genuinely included, heard, and respected as epistemic equals. Anything less is not scholarship. It’s maintenance of the status quo.
In my own work, I have tried to model this ethos. I invite autistic critique, even when it challenges my frameworks. I acknowledge where my background shapes my view. I take seriously the lived realities that statistics and graphs can only hint at. I know that true scholarship does not fear vulnerability; it demands it.
Morris et al. fear vulnerability. Their paper betrays that fear at every turn. It shows a field circling its wagons, reciting loyalty slogans, mistaking defensiveness for rigour.
Real peer review is not an act of defence. It is an act of faith: faith that the pursuit of truth is stronger than the pull of reputation.
And that is the standard we must hold all scholarship to—especially when the lives and dignity of a marginalised community are at stake.
Sidebar - How to Read a Native Ad in a Peer-Reviewed Journal
Some articles are less about advancing knowledge and more about reinforcing orthodoxy. When a paper looks like research but functions like reputation management, you’re likely reading a native ad—academic in form, promotional in substance. Here’s how to spot one:
House Journal, Not Independent Outlet: The paper appears in Behavior Analysis in Practice—the official journal of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). This isn’t a high-impact, interdisciplinary psychology journal. It’s an in-house publication, reviewing the profession from within. That matters.
Industry-Aligned Authors: All authors are practitioners or trainees in the very method being defended. When there are no independent scholars, no dissenting views, and no engagement with those outside the field—especially those harmed by it—the work becomes self-reinforcing.
Closed Sample, Closed Conversation: The study reviews only ten papers, all from ABA-aligned journals. There’s no engagement with broader literature, autistic-authored work, or critical interdisciplinary research. This is a loyalty check, not a literature review.
Prescriptive, Not Exploratory: Phrases like “behaviour analysts must…” or “should be sure to…” signal that the piece is issuing directives, not asking questions. This is not the tone of inquiry—it’s the tone of a field memo.
Reputation Over Reflection: When more energy is spent defending ABA’s image than grappling with the ethical questions raised by trauma survivors, it’s not scholarship. It’s branding.
Recognising these red flags isn’t about cynicism—it’s about clarity. When we mistake internal messaging for independent scholarship, we risk mistaking loyalty for truth. If we are to build ethical, evidence-based practices that genuinely serve autistic people, we must demand more than aesthetics. We must demand rigour, reflexivity, and the courage to let the hard questions stand.
For more information about this see Chown et al. (2019).
Chown, N., Hughes, E., Leatherland, J., & Davison, S. (2019). Response to Leaf et al.’s critique of Kupferstein’s finding of a possible link between applied behaviour analysis and post-traumatic stress disorder. Advances in Autism, 5(4), 318-318.
Final thoughts …
Closed professional systems that regulate their own criticism are not simply ineffective—they are dangerous. When a field defines its own terms of engagement, selects its own referees, and polices the boundaries of acceptable dissent, it severs itself from the very communities it claims to serve.
Behaviour analysis is already experiencing this rupture. The growing alienation between the ABA industry and autistic communities is not the result of misunderstanding—it is the result of a system that listens only to itself. Papers like Morris et al. (2025) do not heal that divide; they deepen it.
It is important to note that I have never been in lockstep with either extreme of the ABA debate. In pieces such as Intersectionality and ABA: Balancing the Scales and Are There Two Sides to the ABA Coin?, I have wrestled openly with the complexity of this field: its histories, its harms, its possibilities, and its failures. I do not believe in purity narratives. I believe in accountability—and accountability cannot thrive in sealed rooms.
What we need is not loyalty. It is transparency.
Not defensiveness. Ethical reflexivity.
Not brand protection. A willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths.
If ABA is to have any future that is not shaped by increasing isolation and justified distrust, it must stop managing its reputation and start confronting its reality. That requires not a tightening of ranks, but an opening of doors—to autistic people, to critical scholars, to interdisciplinary and intersectional inquiry, and to the full weight of ethical responsibility.
Scholarship must serve the truth, not the system.
Anything less is not science. It is survival strategy.
And autistic people deserve better than survival.