New Findings on Conflicts of Interest in Autism Research
Can epistemic justice be restored in autism research?
Posted May 10, 2026 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Imagine being prescribed a medication , then learning that 93% of the studies supporting it were written by researchers holding financial stakes in the drug's continued use. And that most of them said they had no conflicts of interest. Would not you question every conclusion, every claim of benefit?
Now replace "medication" with "Applied Behavior Analysis."
A newly published study by Bottema-Beutel and colleagues, a 2026 update to the earlier investigation published in 2021, examined autism intervention research published in eight ABA journals. The numbers are not subtle:
Five years ago, the field was put on notice when the same research team found widespread undisclosed conflicts. Some journals updated their disclosure policies but apparently, many researchers continued not to disclose their conflicts.
What conflict of interest does
A conflict of interest does not mean researchers are lying or fabricating data. It does mean, however, that financial entanglement can systematically shape what questions get asked, which outcomes get measured, how data gets interpreted, and what gets written up and published. Researchers who make their living providing ABA have an incentive to design studies that favor ABA, to measure outcomes that ABA can move, and to define "success" in ways that protect the revenue model. What they may be less interested in doing is measuring the potential negative outcomes .
In autism intervention research, this matters enormously, because what counts as a "good outcome" is itself contested. Eye contact? Compliance? Are these ABA metrics favored, in part, because the people selecting them profit when those metrics move? Meanwhile, autistic people have long argued that these metrics target external "normalization" rather than well-being, a critique supported by research showing that what the field chooses to measure can diverge sharply from what autistic people say they need. In fact, outcomes like autistic well-being, self-reported quality of life, identity development, and long-term psychological health have been systematically underrepresented in the evidence base.
That the researchers selecting outcome metrics are often the same people financially rewarded for outward “behavior normalization” rather than autistic wellbeing is very much food for thought.
The testimony the field keeps discounting
Epistemic injustice , as described by Miranda Fricker, occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower: when their testimony is discounted or their credibility is structurally undermined. For decades, many autistic adults have reported that ABA caused them harm and may result in excessive compliance , to cite one of the potential negative outcomes. Those accounts have been largely dismissed by the establishment science.
The conflict-of-interest findings from Bottema-Beutel's research point to one explanation of this dismissal that is as troubling as it is logical: When 93% of 93% of authors' conflict disclosures are false, the field becomes much less likely to produce neutral evidence even if the intention to help autistic populations is genuine. Meanwhile, autistic people have been largely absent from the rooms where research agendas are set, outcome measures are chosen, and editorial decisions are made.
Toward epistemically just autism research
Genuine rigor that could restore trust in ABA and, more broadly, autism research requires, at a minimum:
The Bottema-Beutel team has now documented the problem with the current state of research twice. The question is whether this five-year update showing the same problematic results will finally produce a different response and a turn toward epistemic justice.
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Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is a professor of Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.