Talk:David Reardon

Book reviews
Earlier I asked if anyone was aware of book reviews of Reardon's books. Well, I've just done a quick search in Google books where four of his books appeared, and in Google for the fifth book. I'm afraid that I've opened a can of worms; I didn't want to introduce another source of controversy but it seems unavoidable.

This article is about Reardon, which means it's about his work. His books are part of his work so it seems appropriate to say something about them in this article - and we do say a little about some of them. (I know nothing about his books; is there any dispute that they are a sufficiently large part of his work that they deserve mention?)

I thought (and I suppose still think) that book reviews are the natural way to summarize what is in the books. I don't want to read them myself and try to summarize them (and it would be very hard to avoid OR if I did so) so I hoped that a book review would be a source of about a paragraph-long summary of each book.

The can of worms is that from a cursory glance of the reviews all of them appear in pro-life publications. I'm not worried about NPOV: "The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly." The topic at hand is his books and there don't appear to be multiple or conflicting perspectives about that topic apparently because opponents have chosen to ignore the books. If the topic were abortion in general then certainly there would be multiple perspectives to balance, but we're not here to write about abortion, only about Reardon and his work and I don't see conflicting perspectives so NPOV is not a problem.

The problem might be RS. Are other editors going to complain that the sources of these book reviews are not reliable? My goal is simply to get a short but accurate summary of what is in each book. I don't care what that summary says, only that it fairly represents what is in the book itself. If I go to the trouble to read through the book reviews and write one paragraph about each book, will other editors complain that I don't have a reliable source for the book summary? That may be hard to answer a priori but I would like to get some sense of whether I would be wasting my time to go ahead. Will you trust me to honestly try to write an accurate summary of what is in each book? And it shouldn't really matter whether you trust me; will you accept that the sources are sufficiently reliable as to result in a fair summary of each book?

Maybe I'll just go ahead with one of the books and take a stab and see what you think. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It depends to some extent on what kind of pro-life sources we're talking about. Reviews by major pro-life organizations may be notable, in the same way that a review by Planned Parenthood (for example) would be notable. In other words, we should make clear in the text of the article that the reviewer is affiliated with a pro-life advocacy group, but we can still consider including the review as it speaks to how his work is perceived within the pro-life community. Reviews by minor or fringe organizations are probably not so encyclopedic or worthy of inclusion. As to a summary, it would help to have specific wording to discuss (do you want to list the reviews here?) - I'm fine with anything that reads neutrally and doesn't present as fact something which is opinion or argumentation. MastCell Talk 06:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for reorg
I'd like to reorganize the article:
 * I think the Press coverage section should be merged into the Biography. I can't think of any other biography that has a "Press coverage" section. The norm is for statements in the article to be footnoted to press sources.
 * I propose a section on books or (non-technical) articles with subsections for individual books.
 * I propose a section on peer-reviewed papers with subsections for selected papers.
 * I would merge the criticism sections into the relevant subsections. In other words, the criticism would be associated directly with particular studies or articles.
 * After the reorg, I'd add more book reviews and probably a few more peer-reviewed papers and critical commentary.

I have a very rough draft of the reorg at /Reorg. The words are 99% the same as today's article, just rearranged. Sbowers3 (talk) 20:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I like it, especially the first few sections. I'm strongly in favor of doing away with "criticism" and "press coverage" ghettos and integrating the press coverage and criticism into a single narrative, which you've done. I think it's OK to have a separate section on specific studies which provoked comment, rebuttal, mainstream press coverage, etc - which seems to be what you're going for. I'm a little more on the fence about the books - if we could find mainstream reviews (or even reviews from large pro-life groups), then we could break out the individual books, but I don't know how much we can say if there's no reliable outside coverage or discussion of one of his books. Probably focusing on selected books (those with the most related secondary sources available) would make the most sense. I've made a few edits (largely copyedits) to the draft - hope that's OK. MastCell Talk 22:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm very glad that you like the idea. The rough draft was a fairly quick copy and paste and needs a lot of work. Do you think we should move it into the article, then fix it up, or fix it up in the draft, then move it? (And when I say "move" I mean copy and paste - we don't want to replace the old edit history at all. This is just a big edit to the existing article.) Sbowers3 (talk) 23:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's an improvement over the existing article, so I'd be fine with moving it now or whenever. It's been mercifully quiet around here recently, but if anyone objects later on, the article can always be reverted back to its prior form. MastCell Talk 23:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. You've made a good start on copyedits to Biography section - much better than I could have done. I'll work on books and studies sections. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:19, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Nice reorg. Thank you.--IronAngelAlice (talk) 19:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Reardon's Responses
I added Reardon's BMJ and CMAJ responses to the respective sections.

Overall, I think the reorganized article is much better. Thanks Sbowers for all the work you've done on it.--Strider12 (talk) 20:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that rather get into an endless back-and-forth, we should restrict any "debate" to presenting the article in question and other articles/editorials in the peer-reviewed literature which directly address them. If we get into letters to the editor, website posts, and BMJ E-letters (which are essentially lightly moderated blog feedback), then the article is going to lose focus and degenerate back into a battleground. I think Sbowers' approach was fine - he included Reardon's article on the NSLY and the subsequent article reanalyzing the same database. Similarly, including the CMAJ study and the corresponding editorial is appropriate, but getting into letters to the editor is lowering the bar more than would be healthy for the article. MastCell Talk 21:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * No one is suggesting and "endless back-and-forth." My snippets of Reardon's responses are published by the journals.  BMJ's rapid response is more than a blog.  It is reviewed.  While I agree we don't want to get into every letter writer's opinions, it would be quite appropriate to cover both Reardon & Russo's give and take because both are recognized experts in the field and particularly Reardon is the subject of this article.  Unless you are suggesting that someone else submitted the BMJ response pretending to be Reardon, it is a reliable source.  (As you know, self-published material and even the blog of an expert is acceptable as reliable material if the person is indeed recognized as an expert.) Moreover, it is surely reasonable to show that Reardon has responded to these criticims and to point readers to his responses.  Otherwise you are implying that these criticisms are "unanswerable" and have "stunned him to silence." In fact, Reardon's response to Schmiege and Russo is very important as it points out significant differences in the analyses and therefore the interpretation of both team's results. --Strider12 (talk) 15:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Rapid Responses are very lightly moderated blog commentary. They are not reviewed in any meaningful sense, and they are problematic as sources - for example, the BMJ's Rapid Response section was seized briefly by AIDS denialists in 2003 to disseminate their message with the imprimatur of the BMJ (see ). I'm interested in focusing on the point/counterpoint in the peer-reviewed journal. If we include what is essentially blog commentary, then we open the door to an endless round of back-and-forth; we have to set the bar somewhere. It is unclear to me why Reardon's blog commentary should be the "last word", given this lack of equivalence in sourcing, or why my edit implied that Reardon was "stunned into silence" while yours does not leave the same impression of Russo et al. It's very simple: let's stick to what's peer-reviewed - otherwise the article will end up a mess. Also, the paper was a brief report, as you yourself pointed out above, so I'm not clear why you've reverted this. MastCell Talk 16:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not a "blog comment." One letter is published in CMAJ the other is posted on the online letters and comments of BMJ.  As noted above, even a blog of an expert is acceptable to Wikipedia if the person is recognized as an authority.  Reardon, the subject of this article, is at least an authority of his own views.  Also, it is customary in peer reviewed journals to allow authors of articles to respond to criticisms.  You are arbitrarily deciding that readers should not be told of Reardon's responses.  I do no necessarily say Reardon should have the last word.  If you want to give Russo's response to Reardon, that's fine.  Your complaint that allowing Reardon to respond to critics would make a "mess" of the article is unconvincing.--Strider12 (talk) 20:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)--


 * BMJ e-letters are lightly moderated, like the average blog comments section. If you want to talk about the CMAJ letters section, you might want to note that most of the letters therein are critical of Reardon's methodology and his biases. I don't want to include Russo's response to Reardon's response to Russo's response - that's exactly the point. One of the basic tenets of WP:NPOV is that disputes are characterized, not re-fought, on Wikipedia. Let's not re-fight it through proxies. MastCell Talk 22:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

A request for small edits
This may seem a strange request from someone who made a major reorg, but I'd like ask editors to make small edits. If you're modifying several sections or several paragraphs, it would help if you made them in separate edits instead of all in one big edit. Alternatively (and this is what I did), propose your edit here or on a subpage, before inserting into the article. The reason for my request is to make it easier to see exactly what has changed, and to make it possible to revert part of an edit instead of the whole thing. We all know that some edits are going to be controversial but often parts of a large edit are not controversial. We shouldn't have to lose the good parts when reverting the not-so-good parts. Sbowers3 (talk) 16:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding Reardon's BMJ study, the current descripiton is inaccurate and misleading because the scope of the investigation is very narrowly defined. I suggested:


 * Reardon coauthored a study published in 2003 in the British Medical Journal reporting his analysis of depression rates among women whose first pregnancy was unintended using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) database. After controlling for a pre-pregnancy measure of psychiatric state, the researchers found that an average of eight years after the pregnancy married women who carried their unintended pregnancy to term were significantly less likely to have depression than similar women who aborted the unintended pregnancy.


 * Regarding Reardon's response to Schmiege and Russo I added:
 * In response, Reardon wrote that Schiege and Russo's redefinition of coding variables did not contradict his findings and also introduced coding changes which tended "to muddy the data and increase the likelihood that any statistical comparisons will not detect significant results."


 * Similarly, I added a summary of his CMAJ response to Major & others.


 * In a response published in the same journal, Reardon noted that his methodology was identical to that of another record based study by one of Major's colleagues, Henry David, which was highly praised by the APA review team on which both Major and David served. Furthermore, if Major's "hypothesis that mentally disturbed women are more likely to choose abortion" is true "this argument merely strengthens our conclusion that a history of abortion is a marker for mental illness."  He also noted that one of Major's own studies had demonstrated that "abortion can be the direct cause of post-traumatic stress disorder."


 * As noted in my conversation with MastCell, I believe his responses are clearly relevent and verifiable. His BMJ response is actually much more detailed, but I suggest this short summary is probably sufficient. Omission of these responses biases the article by depriving response to criticisms.--Strider12 (talk) 20:40, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * See above thread. MastCell Talk 22:15, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Internal Links
Maybe an internal link to the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a group with similar views to Elliot Institute, but filled with members who have had the first-hand experience of abortion. Ste11aeres (talk) 02:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Peer-reviewed studies
I have expanded and trimmed this section. Because Reardon has 25 cites in PubMed I thought there should be more than two of his papers in his section. To decide which ones were more notable, I counted how many times each paper was cited elsewhere in PubMed. It turned out that the two most cited papers were already in our article. I added the next most cited article and I added his earliest paper, notable only for being his first paper.

I trimmed the summaries to just a few sentences, for the most part taken from the abstracts. I didn't want to get into a lot of details or a long back and forth. Abstracts should be a fair summary of what the author thinks most important, helps to avoid cherry-picking, and retains verifiability for readers who might not have access to the full papers. Sbowers3 (talk) 15:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and reformatted some of the citations. The summaries look fine to me at a glance; I'm getting a bit of tunnel vision on these articles so I'm going to give it a few days and come back and look again more closely. MastCell Talk 17:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Nonneutrality of "pro-life" and "pro-choice"
"Pro-life" and "pro-choice" are propaganda terms rather than neutral descriptives. Terms such as "anti-abortion" and "abortion rights" are more neutral. Is there a page for a global discussion on use of these terms? Granted these are the terms preferred by the respective movements, but they also make more or less false claims. In such a case more neutral terms would be better. Burressd (talk) 00:19, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

"Abortion rights" is a propaganda term as well. The terms "anti-abortion" and "pro-abortion" are more factual and neutral.Ste11aeres (talk) 02:32, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

"Pro-abortion" is only "factual and neutral" if you're describing a movement with its goal that everyone who is pregnant must have abortions. Nice try though. Sapphireblue] ([[User talk:Sapphireblue|talk) 20:28, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Sad commentary
I wrote the following before the current reversion. My concerns with this piece have been addressed. Evidently those more wiki-skilled than I know how to manage puffery. "Mr. Reardon's views and research are maverick science, not part of the scientific consensus (as is documented in some of the included references). Unfortunately, a naive reader of this article would get the opposite impression. Given the political intensity of Mr. Reardon's supporters, Wikipedia operating procedures make it very hard to correct that error. A true encyclopedia ought to do better." Burressd (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Reardon's birth year
It seems odd to have a biography that doesn't cite a year of birth. However I could not find a source for Reardon's birth date. Does anyone know of one? Burressd (talk) 18:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

"Framing"
This edit by Elizium23 is both factually incorrect and tendentious. The links in question do not belong to "pro-abortion" websites or organizations, and the use of the term "pro-abortion" is unencylopedic and partisan. These organizations support the right to abortion, but are not "pro-abortion" nor is it appropriate to describe them as such in a neutral encyclopedia. Reputable sources generally use factual terminology such as "abortion-rights supporters" and "abortion-rights opponents" to describe the two sides of this issue. Elizium has already reverted twice, and I'm not interested in edit-warring, but I'm also not OK with inappropriately partisan, unencyclopedic terminology. MastCell Talk 05:36, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm not OK with it either, and your addition of the term "pro-choice" is framing, partisan, and unencyclopedic. Elizium23 (talk) 12:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed it for the both of you, although I'm not sure we even need to separate out the links with any labels. Couldn't they all just be listed together with no labels? Better yet, a lot of them look pretty low quality, so most of them could probably be culled from the article altogether. Marquardtika (talk) 15:39, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Marquardtika. That looks fine to me. I'm certainly not wedded to using the term "pro-choice". Many reputable sources use the language that I suggested above, and that Marquardtika installed, and characterize the two sides of the issue in terms of support for or opposition to abortion rights. Describing abortion-rights supporters as "pro-abortion", however, is deceptive, factually inaccurate, and unencyclopedic, which was my objection to the initial edit. To Marquardtika's other point, I agree that the links in general aren't particularly useful and could probably be removed en masse without any decrement in the article's quality. MastCell Talk 16:48, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like took the axe to the further reading section. Good riddance, I say! Marquardtika (talk) 02:54, 27 September 2020 (UTC)