Abortion

Ronald Bailey | 3.13.2024 4:10 PM

Our secular society has replaced the old arbiters of truth, priests and potentates, with science. One simple definition of the scientific method is that it is the self-correcting process of objectively establishing facts through testing and experimentation. Instead of appealing to the wisdom of divinely ordained scriptures or the pronouncements of princes, sophisticated moderns turn to the peer-reviewed scientific literature in search of reliable information on health, engineering, and, yes, public policy. Therefore, as we saw all too well during the late pandemic, politicians, public health practitioners, potion promoters, and pundits more or less all claim to "follow the science." (One notable recent exception is the ruling in a case involving in vitro fertilization by the chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court.)

So is the recent retraction of three articles by the scientific journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology an example of the self-correcting processes of science or something less noble? After all, these articles were prominently cited as evidence in a federal court case that will now be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.

Sage Publications retracted two articles that suggested that the use of the abortion pill mifepristone significantly increased post-abortion emergency room use. Sage also retracted a third article from the same journal that reported that nearly half of Florida physicians the researchers identified as providing abortions had at least one malpractice claim, public complaint, disciplinary action, or criminal charge. (As background consider that a Florida law firm specializing in medical malpractice reports, "Physicians who provide care for women, particularly pregnant women, are the number one practice area for med mal lawsuits. Of OB-GYNs and related practitioners, 85 percent reported that they have been sued at some point during their career.")

In his April 7, 2023 decision, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk "followed the science" by citing the now retracted articles when he overturned the U.S Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval back in 2000 of the drug as safe and efficacious. Some of the studies have now been cited and their retraction decried in amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court.

So why were the articles retracted? And why now? The Sage retraction notice states that "we made this decision with the journal's editor because of undeclared conflicts of interest and after expert reviewers found that the studies demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor that invalidates or renders unreliable the authors' conclusions."

With respect to conflicts of interest, the Sage note observes that all but one of the authors of the studies were affiliated with various "pro-life organizations that explicitly support judicial action to restrict access to mifepristone." This is entirely true. What is puzzling is that these affiliations are acknowledged in all of the articles as well as included in the fairly extensive professional biographies at the conclusions of each article. The authors........

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