Talk:Priscilla K. Coleman

Biased, Off Topic Biography
This bio is currently very biased and ill focused. It appears as an extension of an effort to tar any person with an association with David Reardon with allegations of bias and sloppy research. Editors may want to approach it cautiously as the originator of this biography, IronAngelAlice aka 131.216.41.16 as revealed successfully discussed and implemented and effort to "purge all references from the Elliot Institute and David Reardon" from abortion and mental health even though Reardon's studies are peer reviewed and reliable as are Coleman's many, many studies.   The pattern of this editor's contributions to Wikipedia can be seen in this count andthis count.

I advice editors to be alert to material in this biography that violates NPOV and relevance. For example, this article is about Coleman, not Reardon nor inferences about pro-life beliefs and relationships. Off topic material should be removed.--Strider12 (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

This heading summarizes my reaction to the article on reading it. It is basically a hatchet job trying to use ad hominem attack to disprove the well documented connection between abortion and various mental health risks.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If you can find reliable third-party sources that paint her in a more positive light, by all means add them. Hint: "LifeNews" and "Culture of Life" are not reliable sources. Coleman, even if she were reliable, is not a third-party source. (Also, I don't think "ad hominem" means what you think it means.) Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 08:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You have already biased the issue by saying that those are not reliable. You have said "these things agree with her view, we will not rely on them.  These others are against her, they are reliable".  That is not NPOV, that is pre-imposed view.  Especially with the well proven political nature of the APA.  They have declassified things in ways that were clearly responses to political pressure not scientific inquiry.  You have biased the situation, so that the results will be your way.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Inferences Not Supported by Citations
Regarding IronAlice Angel's start for this biography,, there are many errors and inferences not supported by the sources cited.

For starters, the following statement is not supported by the source:
 * The statistical methods Coleman and her co-authors use have been criticized by the American Psychological Association (APA)[5] A panel convened by the APA has written that the studies by Coleman, and her co-authors have "inadequate or inappropriate" controls and don't adequately control "for women's mental health prior to the pregnancy and abortion." [5]

The studies of Coleman were ALL written after the APA panel, which issued a report back in 1990. IAA seems to be assuming that if the panel had reviewed Coleman's studies they surely would have rejected their findings....an assumption, not a fact.

Nor should it be inferred from a claim that ONE of Reardon's studies published with Cougle in the BMJ (which Coleman was not a party in) did not adequately control for confounding factors and used inappropriate controls that we can then apply that claim to a statment alleging or implying that Coleman engages in the use of "inadequate or inappropriate" methodologies. Moreover, examination of the studies published by Coleman will actually reveal that MANY of her studies actually do include controls for prior mental health. For example:  So again, one should be careful of overexaggerations.--Strider12 (talk) 18:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Similarly, the statement identifying Cougle, Rue, and Reardon as "pro-life advocates" is unsupported and ill-defined and perjotive. And the claim that Reardon is guilty of "misrepresenting his academic credentials", much less his peer reviewed research methods, is not supported by the sources cited. More importantly, these accusations are irrelevent to a biogray about Coleman. (He is actually only accused of earning a Ph.D. from an unaccredited university...and there is no evidence he ever mirepresented that he had a doctorate from any other source.)

Anotehr error. The claim that she is the author of 12 studies is simply incorrect. Pubmed shows she is the author of far more. IAA simply takes a reference in a transcript regarding about how many studies Coleman co-authored with Reardon and inserts this in the text with her own spin on what the number describes. Such a lack of care for pecision in describing what is actually reported (rather than what she infers from reports) and concern for checking details is a common problem.

The above list of biased inferences and errors in the article suggest great caution and investigation are required for all edits made by IronAngelAlice regarding the people and issues involved regarding abortion and mental health.--Strider12 (talk) 18:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Citations that don't support claims & Guilt by Association
I removed the discussion regarding Cougle, Rue, & Reardon as this article is about Coleman, not people with whom she has co-authored articles. This appears to be mostly based on a non-peer reviewed criticism of these persons published in the political journal the Public Eye web magazine, which clearly has an agenda and is probably not a balanced source.

I'd also like to see a quote from the APA supporting the statement that "the statistical methods" of Coleman have been criticized by the APA. Is it not more appropriate to state that the conclusions of Coleman have been criticized. Surely, if her statistical methods were bad, her papers wouldn't be published--Jillnight (talk) 19:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It appears that the first two links are broken. These sources should be checked, particularly the claim that her CV declares that she is a "pro-life advocate"--Jillnight (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

A little more digging indicates that the statement quoted by Jillian Henderson and Katharine Miller was not actually published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders but is only referenced in the Public Eye article...which is clearly just a compliation of any complaints about researchers in this field as they could collect. This is more on the level of a "blog" type of opinion which does not rise to the level of being a reliable or significant source. This is an article about Coleman, not a group of researchers who have been criticized. If the criticisms are not specifically about Coleman--naming her--then they shouldn't be included here as they may otherwise be directed specifically at one of her colleagues, not her.--70.253.166.64 (talk) 19:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed this section. After re-reading it for the fifthed time I realized you are right.  Yet it has been used to exclude other statements on the grounds that this is a "far more reliable source" than Life-Site News.  If Life-Site News is disqualified for being "partisan", than what is Public Eye?  Life Site news is at least a real publication?  National Right to Life News is a publication that even really prints its material.  The fact that partisan publications are somehow acceptable to attack Coleman but not to counter-act those attacks is truly odd.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

CV and AAPLOG membership needed
Hi,

An August 2008 edit added links to Coleman's [[Curriculum vitae
 * CV]] and claims she has membership with AAPLOG.

I was unable to follow the link to her CV. I have put a Failed verification tag because of this.

Also, I am unable find a membership list at the link to the AAPLOG site. I have put a Failed verification tag because of this.

I do not doubt the accuracy of the statements, but I am unable to verify them.

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Bizarre reversions
To people who have reverted my edits:


 * 1) Do you have something against correct spelling? Is it non-neutral now to spell "addition," "published," and "criticism" correctly? Blind reverting isn't very mature.
 * 2) Is her collaboration with Reardon really important enough to be in the lead?
 * 3) In contrast, WP:LEAD instructs that the lead should include "prominent controversies," and since most reliable secondary sources that talk about Coleman's work also mention that it's been found wanting, this is a fact worth including.
 * 4) We should try to find a compromise as to the wording for the lead. I've refreshed my memory at WP:SAY so I see now that "asserted" is also a no-no, but "document" implies truth. Is "Coleman has published articles in peer-reviewed journals that state that there is a correlation" acceptable to everyone?
 * 5) "Many" peer-reviewed, long-term studies is subjective. We should provide the number of studies or remove the term.
 * 6) "Russo alleged that when the methodological flaws in the studies were corrected" is a flat-out MOS violation at best. We have a reliable source reporting that she found errors, and no reliable source contradicting this. If you're really unwilling to write based on the sources, use neutral terms, not "alleged."
 * 7) "Culture of Life," "LifeNews", "After-Abortion," and the NRLC are not reliable sources.

-- Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 19:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I just have something against your single minded refusal to accept anything that does not agree with your position. You have shown yourself to be extremely biased by seeking to exclude statements on the ground that you feel they come from unreliable sources.  This is the ultimate in bias.  The article already involves the very questionable reliance on authority, by citing a group that has very questionable standards in these studies.  Your attempts to exclude things as not reliable are not appreciated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry to hear that you think a preference for reliable sources is "the ultimate in bias." I hope you'll take your complaint to higher-ups, since verifiability is a core content policy here. Maybe you'll be able to effect some wide systemic change. Now, do you have any policy-based arguments? Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 19:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Life Site News" is reliable. You are just a hater of the un-born who will stop at nothing to decieve people on the truth about abortion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I will not let radical feminist like you engage in unjustified maligning of people who do scientific research and show that the truth is different than what you want it to be.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Please remain civil when dealing with other editors and refrain from personal attacks. Now, do you have any policy-based arguments? Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 19:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Do you have something against correct spelling? Is it non-neutral now to spell "addition," "published," and "criticism" correctly?" That was certainly civil. You know full well that this was not at all the issue, and are being snyde and rude, and then you accuse me of being the one who is not civil?  You openly attacked the use of certain publications, and then acted surprised that I distrusted your edits against such.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is another example of "civilness" "I'm sorry to hear that you think a preference for reliable sources is "the ultimate in bias."John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've removed this material as categorically unacceptable for Wikipedia, or for any site that aspires to be a serious reference work. We do not take material from partisan pro-life websites and present it as fact, and as a definitive rebuttal to material from far better sources. This is really poor editing which contravenes most, if not all, of our content policies, and I'll request outside feedback if it continues. And seeing as how I'm not a "radical feminist" or "hater of the un-born", maybe you'd be willing engage my arguments on a slightly more elevated level? MastCell Talk 20:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * More: this edit also violates our content guidelines. When we discuss the state of medical knowledge, it is utterly inappropriate to cherry-pick primary studies. We present Coleman's argument, which is that she's not the only one to have reported associations between abortion and mental health, neutrally. I don't see the need to buttress that with an editorial assertion and a cherry-picked reference - that strikes me as poor editing at best, and inappropriate agenda-driven editing at worst. MastCell Talk 20:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Cherry-picked reference"? What do you mean?  As opposed to the "reliable" sources of a letter to a journal that has only been published in a blog somewhere?  How is it cherry picking, you are the one who introduced the claim that "independent sources' have not replicated her work, yet this shows that others have.  You won't let me quote from schoarly journals, and yet if I try to quote a report on these scholarly journals so it is not first-hand you attack that because my source is evidently not as "un-partisan" as that paragon of neutrality, The New York Times.  If you buy that I have prime realestate in Florida for you.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You have been decived. The material in question was in response to something written in the New York Times, which is a very partisan publication.  None of the material being responsded to was from peer-reviewed journals.  I had been decived, but on re-reading it saw that a big chunk was from a letter to a scholarly publication, which is far different than something being in a schlarly publication.  Basically you are saying that opinion pieces in the New York Times are acceptable sources, but opinion pieces in other publications that are pro-life, even though they cite many more sources than in the New York Times piece, are not acceptable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * My, there seems to be a lot of "deception" going around. Or at least a lot of accusatory and overpersonalized language. If we're talking about this New York Times piece, then a) it's not an opinion piece, b) the New York Times is generally considered a reliable source according to this site's guidelines. If you don't see a difference between the Times and lifesitenews.org, then we've got a long way to go to make progress here. MastCell Talk 22:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Unneccessary hard core attacks in lead
It seems to me that the claim that there has allegedly not been independent replication of Coleman's work in the lead is unneccesarily combative. This is especially true since the fact of the matter is that Coleman's work has been published with a wide variety of co-authors in at least 5 different peer-reviewed journals. She has so many different co-authors that a large percentage of people who have studied this issue are her direct colleges.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think we're clear on the concept of reproducibility. Having co-authors work with you on a study is not reproducibility. Having your research published in multiple journals is not reproducibility. Reproducibility means that if an independent researcher applies your methods to your dataset, then they should arrive at a similar result. That's exactly what Steinberg et al. attempted in . They were unable to reproduce even the basic findings of Coleman's study. In the paper, they detail what they believe are the reasons for the discrepancy. The story was picked up in the Washington Post, which supports its relevance and notability. The language we use here is reflective of that in independent, reliable sources - as it should be. We include Coleman's response, which was to assert that other researchers have reached similar conclusions to hers (albeit with different datasets) and to allege unspecified errors in the Steinberg paper. MastCell Talk 21:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Causality
I undid this edit by Roscelese. I'm assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that the edit was based on Coleman's recent paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry. That paper concludes: ... when the independent variable cannot be ethically manipulated, as is the case with abortion history, definitive causal conclusions are precluded from both individual studies and from a quantitative synthesis such as this one. Although an answer to the causal question is not readily discerned based on the data available, as more prospective studies with numerous controls are being published, indirect evidence for a causal connection is beginning to emerge. Thus, her paper acknowledges, however grudgingly, that such analyses cannot demonstrate causation. I have to believe that no competent reviewer or editor would allow an author to claim a causal relationship on the basis of such an analysis, and Coleman doesn't do so in that paper. Of course, she can make whatever statements she likes about causation outside the realm of peer review, but as far as I know she has not made any such claim in her peer-reviewed work (please correct me if I'm wrong). MastCell Talk 02:04, 5 September 2011 (UTC)


 * MastCell is correct in that the new article does state "when the independent variable cannot be ethically manipulated, as is the case with abortion history, definitive causal conclusions are precluded from both individual studies and from a quantitative synthesis such as this one." However, it also says "indirect evidence for a causal connection is beginning to emerge" and "10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion." That seems to me like adequate justification for saying in the lead that it's not just in interviews that she's claimed a causal relationship. What do you think? –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 02:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

"Largely her own"
DMSBel says only 6 of the 22 are Coleman's, but this is incorrect; 10 of the 22 are hers. (A further few are by her colleague David Reardon.) –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 17:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

"Mixed" vs. "poor"
Re: this edit, I still think "mixed" is probably a better adjective than "poor". There were some supportive letters in the BJP feedback, including one from Fergusson. I think it's appropriate to detail the concerns, as we do, in the interest of due weight, but I also think it's fair to say that the overall response was "mixed" rather than uniformly negative. Just my 2 cents. MastCell Talk 05:29, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've qualified the sentence, if that helps. What do you think? –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 05:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * To clarify, "mixed" connotes, to me, that the positive and negative reception is approximately even, not that there is non-trivial positive support. It seems to be over-rating her support in the scientific community. Are there other words that would convey this without, in your opinion, under-rating it? –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 05:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Nah, I guess I'm not really that attached to the word we use upfront. I think it would be fair to call the reception "mixed", and I also think it would be fair to call it "mostly negative" (since, after all, the APA and RCOG have criticized her work and the editor of the journal where she published one of her most recent papers no longer seems to think its conclusions are supportable). I think the more important thing is to give proportionate, adequately sourced detail about the reception of her work, which I think we're doing in the body of the section. MastCell Talk 21:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

News coverage of journal's "disavowal"
It seems like the J Psych Research editorial disavowal of Coleman's paper has been out there for awhile. For whatever reason, it's now the subject of quite a bit of press coverage, for example: Some of these sources should probably be cited in our coverage of this issue in this article. MastCell Talk 22:39, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

General sanctions
Please note that as her notability relates to her work on abortion and mental health issues, this article falls under the Abortion-related General Sanctions, and is restricted to one revert per user per day. Thanks. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:39, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Lede reverts
The Coleman sources cited do say that problems are "attributable to abortion," not just correlated with it. There are some other words used which seem also to indicate causality to my lay ear, but perhaps in the jargon of the field are not used to indicate causality - but "attributable" seems pretty cut-and-dried. In light of the highly unreliable nature of her research, I think "says" or "claims" is also preferable to "indicates." –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 03:40, 30 July 2019 (UTC) ? –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 14:13, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

"Fixed typo"
Not a typo; the article is about Coleman and her claims, even if the claims are incorrect. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 15:53, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Missing citation link
The link to citation number 6 is currently broken and I have unable to locate the relevant paper. Propose to remove this citation or link to the appropriate file if it can be located. Acasualobservation (talk) 18:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)