We live in an age of suspicion to a degree that I don’t remember from my youth—though I admit that my memory is fallible, and I may be mistaken in this. Perhaps we are no more suspicious of the motives of those with whom we disagree than ever we were, and we always thought that those who disagreed with us were not merely wrong, but evil.
Whatever the case may be, it’s now difficult to discuss anything contentious without the discussion swiftly descending into an examination of the motives of the opponents, as if the truth of what anyone said were dependent on his reasons for saying it: reasons which are themselves usually a matter of conjecture rather than of ascertainable truth.
I doubt that anyone is, or has ever been, entirely free from the temptation to resort to the ad hominem in argument, but name-calling is now a pervasive rhetorical device, especially in discussion of whatever touches on cherished political beliefs but which, on the face of it, should be a matter of objective fact rather than political viewpoint.
The psychological harm or benefit to women who have had an abortion is one such subject. Those who say it’s psychologically beneficial, or at least not harmful, are in favor of easy access to the procedure; those who say it’s psychologically harmful want to restrict it. Few are those who say that it’s psychologically harmful but nevertheless that it should be easily available; likewise, few are they who believe that it’s psychologically beneficial, or at least not harmful, and who nevertheless want to restrict it. One suspects that it’s belief that determines the evidence rather than the evidence that determines belief.
Retraction is the process by which a journal alerts the public (usually a small one) that something it has published is either fraudulent or egregiously in error, sometimes admitted by the author or authors. A retracted paper should therefore be disregarded and not subsequently cited as evidence. A review article is rarely retracted because, while it may contain errors, it doesn’t contain new data and is an attempted summation of the evidence on a particular subject. Inevitably it contains a judgment as to the weight to be accorded to contradictory evidence.
Coleman invited a strong response because she herself alleged that the authors of the article she criticized were politically motivated. She didn’t confine herself to saying that they were merely mistaken:
“The biased science characterizing the Turnaway Study is aligned with a pervasive and systemic phenomenon wherein deriving reliable and valid results via careful attention to methodology and scrutiny by the scientific community have been supplanted by politics.”
No doubt animadverting on the motives of those with whom one disagrees is an occupational hazard of psychologists, who spend their time thinking about the thought processes of others; but such claims have no place in scientific journals. If there is blame to be attached here, it must in part be to the editors of the journal, who didn’t request the removal of the offending passages.
Everyone has motives, of course; I should be very surprised if the authors of the study that Coleman criticized—10 women—started their study with a completely open mind as far as access to abortion was concerned. But that by itself wouldn’t invalidate their findings. Only their untruth, or the invalidity of the methods used, would do that.
Coleman is now threatening a lawsuit against Frontiers in Psychology because of the reputational damage that a retraction usually brings, since it inevitably carries with it a whiff of dishonesty. A lawsuit, however, will just muddy the waters further, because error alone isn’t a sufficient reason for retraction (it is rare that any scientific medical or psychological paper is entirely free of error and provides no grounds for criticism). Once motives rather than evidence and argument are made the focus of disagreement, one enters a labyrinth from which exit is rare.
There are inherent problems with the kind of research done on such matters as the harms or benefits of access to abortion. First is their reproducibility (no pun intended). Usually, such research is unlikely to be reproduced with sufficient exactitude to confirm or refute findings. Hence, much must be taken on faith, according to taste.
Finally, a question such as the rightness or wrongness of abortion, or for that matter of the death penalty, can’t be treated simply as a utilitarian question. It might well be, for example, that the murder of certain people would conduce more to human happiness than to human misery, but we wouldn’t therefore license murder provided it was confined to such people. The end can sometimes justify the means, but often it can’t: it all depends. And what it depends on is that great intangible, judgment. Most people prefer absolutely clear-cut principles that they think can assure them in advance of always being right, whereas judgment, being variable and uncertain, will often lead them into error or wickedness. Nevertheless, life requires judgment and not just principle.
