RESEARCH ARTICLE

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Bernet, Xu, 2023, Cover, Text, Appendix
Scholarly rumors: Citation analysis of vast
misinformation regarding parental alienation
theory
William Bernet1 | Shenmeng Xu2

1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences, Vanderbilt University School of
Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
2Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Correspondence
William Bernet, Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences, Vanderbilt University
School of Medicine, 1313 Twenty-First
Avenue South, 209 Oxford House, Nashville,
TN 37232-4245, USA
Email: william.bernet@vumc.org
Abstract
Misinformation is widespread in political discourse, mental
health literature, and hard science. This article describes
recurrent publication of the same misinformation regarding
parental alienation (PA), that is, variations of the statement:
“PA theory assumes that the favored parent has caused PA in
the child simply because the child refuses to have a relationship
with the rejected parent, without identifying or proving
alienating behaviors by the favored parent.” Ninety-four
examples of the same misinformation were identified and
subjected to citation analysis using Gephi software, which
displays the links between citing material and cited material.
The recurrent misinformation reported here is not trivial;
these statements are significant misrepresentations of PA
theory. Plausible explanations for this trail of misinformation
are the psychological mindset of the authors (i.e., confirmation
bias) and the authors’ writing skills (e.g., sloppy research
practices such as persistent use of secondary sources for
their information). The authors of this article recommend
that publications containing significant misinformation
should be corrected or retracted.
KEYWORDS
citation analysis, disinformation, misinformation, parental alienation
theory, retraction
RESEARC H ART I C L E
Scholarly rumors: Citation analysis of vast
misinformation regarding parental alienation
theory
William Bernet1 | Shenmeng Xu2
DOI: 10.1002/bsl.2605
Received: 28 August 2022 Revised: 2 December 2022 Accepted: 18 December 2022
231
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© 2022 The Authors. Behavioral Sciences & The Law published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Behav Sci Law. 2023;41:231–245. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/bsl

[Scholarly rumors involve] a cohort of scholars who misquote research and then quote one another,
without checking back to the original source. This is a problem typically caused when authors who
have strong ideological or activist views rely primarily upon secondary data sources …. The rumor may
begin when there is simply some misunderstanding and miscommunication of research findings, or it
may originate in more egregious use of strategies that discredit others’ research findings.
Janet R. Johnston (2007, p. 18)
1 | INTRODUCTION
This insightful definition by Janet R. Johnston aptly describes the topic of this article. The scholarly rumor documented
in this research consists of 94 false statements pertaining to parental alienation (PA), which occurred in
peer-reviewed journals, government documents, legal briefs, books intended for professional audiences, and presentations
at national conferences over a period of almost 30 years. The remarkable feature of these data is that the
same misinformation was passed down from one author to the next author to the next author—almost all PA critics—
thus relying on secondary sources rather than on the original writings of PA scholars.
This article is included in a special issue of Behavioral Sciences & the Law, which pertains to advances in forensic
psychiatric assessment. This research relates to the assessment of PA in both clinical and forensic settings. Although
there have been advances in the systematic identification of PA—such as the introduction of the Five-Factor Model
for the diagnosis of PA (Bernet, 2022)—it will be hard to apply these new approaches if there is widespread misunderstanding
regarding basic principles of PA theory.
1.1 | Misinformation landscape
During a time when public trust in institutions is trending downward due to the influence of misinformation, public
trust in scientists has recently been described as “somewhat tepid” (Funk, 2017, p. 86). Scientific misinformation
about climate change, vaccines, food production, and pharmaceutical products flourishes in social media, entertainment
news, and the internet. It is remarkable that not only is misinformation abundant on the internet, it is often
more popular than accurate information (Wang et al., 2019). A recent article (Kupferschmidt, 2022) in Science with
a provocative title—“On the Trail of Bullshit”—describes the work of biologist Carl Bergstrom and his colleagues
in identifying and suppressing misinformation and disinformation. For example, West and Bergstrom (2021) said,
“Misinformation has reached crisis proportions. It poses a risk to international peace, interferes with democratic
decision-making, endangers the well-being of the planet, and threatens public health” (p. 1). This issue has significant
implications for topics that traverse psychology, law, and the resulting public policy.
Wardle and Derakhshan (2017)—in a report for the Council of Europe—developed a comprehensive, interdisciplinary
understanding of misinformation and what to do about it. They introduced a new term, information disorder,
which has three components: the agent (the individuals or groups that created, produced, and distributed the misinformation),
the message (its type of communication, format, and characteristics), and the interpreter (the person who
read the message, their interpretation of the message, and the action they took). For the purposes of this article, the
most important component is the recipient of the message and how they are influenced by “motivated cognition,
which refers to the unconscious tendency of individuals to process information to fit conclusions that suit some
internal goal” (p. 44). Whether or not the receiver believes misinformation depends on a number of factors, such as
the reputation of the source, the apparent intent of the source, the repetition of the message by multiple sources, the
plausibility of the message, and, of course, confirmation bias. As people position themselves in information silos, they
are more likely to encounter misinformation that personally appeals to them, and they are more likely to believe it.
The research reported here operates from the perspective that any one piece of scientific literature is not
isolated. Scientific literature consists of the body of the scientific work and the references that reflect the author’s

engagement with certain ideas, methods, and techniques proffered by other authors. The citing behavior of authors
is an indisputable part of scientific communication. These references trace the history of scientific development; they
can also trace the history of misinformation.
In a classic article in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Weinstock (1971) identified 15 reasons
authors cite other authors’ work, such as “paying homage to pioneers” and “correcting the work of others” (p. 19).
Any scientific study must be based on the achievements of predecessors, so it is important for authors to acknowledge
and respect the labor of others. Within that realm, scientists are trained to cite both supporting and opposing
findings or perspectives within a certain discipline since both pros and cons contribute to the broader conversation
of scientific knowledge.
Taken together, the reasons and motivations for citing, failing to cite, or improperly citing the works of others
provide the basis for why misinformation threatens scientific objectivity. By studying the citation relationship among
sources of misinformation, scientists will be better equipped to combat the root of misinformation, understand the
motivations to disseminate it, and provide recommendations for dealing with this problem. It is hoped the current
study can provide a template for other researchers at the intersection of law and psychology to investigate and deal
with this problem. To demonstrate this process, the current study investigates the origins and repetitions of misinformation
in citations concerning PA theory.
1.2 | Parental alienation theory
Parental alienation is a mental condition in which a child—usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict
separation or divorce—allies strongly with one parent (the favored parent) and rejects a relationship with the other
parent (the alienated parent) without a good reason. The most common cause of PA is the child’s indoctrination by
the favored parent to dislike or fear the alienated parent (Bernet, 2020a, pp. 5–6), although it is possible that some
other person—such as a grandparent or a therapist—has influenced the child to reject a parent.
Parental alienation syndrome (PAS) was identified by Richard Gardner (1985) in The Academy Forum, a journal of
news and opinion published by the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. Subsequent writers have generally referred
to PA rather than PAS. The basic principles of PA theory are widely accepted among mental health and legal professionals
who deal with child custody disputes and related aspects of family law. For example, at a national conference
of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, a survey of attendees found that 98% of respondents agreed
that, “Some children are manipulated by one parent to irrationally and unjustifiably reject the other parent” (Baker
et al., 2011). Also, several studies of mental health professionals have shown that forensic and clinical practitioners
generally accept the reality of PA and that they identify PA in some of their clients (Baker, 2007; Bow et al., 2009;
Cox, 2010). PA theory has also been widely accepted in legal settings. Lorandos (2020) analyzed 34 years of published
opinions of trial and appellate courts in the United States; he found 1181 cases in which PA was found to be material,
probative, relevant, admissible, and discussed in a trial. The research by Lorandos primarily considered appellate
cases, so the number of trial cases involving PA would have been much higher.
A recent survey of child custody evaluators revealed a strong level of endorsement regarding terminology related
to PA theory, such as the definitions for “contact refusal,” “parental alienation,” “estrangement,” “alienating parent,”
“alienated parent,” and the “Five-Factor Model” for the diagnosis of PA (Bernet et al., 2022). Thus, there appears to
be general agreement regarding the criteria for the diagnosis PA. The components of the Five-Factor Model are: (1)
the child manifests contact resistance or refusal; (2) the presence of a prior positive relationship between the child
and the rejected parent; (3) the absence of abuse, neglect, or seriously deficient parenting on the part of the rejected
parent; (4) the use of multiple alienating behaviors (ABs) on the part of the favored parent; and (5) the child exhibits
many of the eight behavioral manifestations of PA (Bernet & Greenhill, 2022).
The differential diagnosis of contact refusal includes PA, among other possibilities, such as a child’s normal preference
of one parent over the other; severe loyalty conflict; a child avoiding a loyalty conflict by gravitating to the side
BERNET and XU 233
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of one parent; a child with separation anxiety; an unusually stubborn child who objects to their parents’ divorce; child
maltreatment, as seen in parental estrangement; and shared delusional disorder (Freeman, 2020). Furthermore, the
diagnosis of PA requires the identification of specific ABs by the favored parent; that is, the existence of an alienating
parent cannot be assumed or inferred simply because the child manifests contact refusal. This feature of PA theory
was clearly stated by Baker (2020):
[N]ot all children who reject a parent are alienated, that is, have been exposed to alienating behaviors
(ABs) on the part of the favored parent that foster their unjustified rejection of the other parent. …
Nowhere is it written in any legitimate treatise that all rejecting children are alienated.
(p. 208)
Thus, PA theory holds that ABs (by the favored parent) and behavioral signs of PA (in the alienated child) are each
necessary but not sufficient for a diagnosis of PA. It is possible for a child to manifest contact refusal, but not be
alienated; it is common for children to experience ABs by Parent A, but not reject a relationship with Parent B.
1.3 | Misinformation regarding parental alienation
The persistent, recurrent misinformation reported in this article was variations of the following statement:
Parental alienation theory assumes that the preferred parent has caused parental alienation in the
child simply because the child refuses to have a relationship with the rejected parent without identifying
or proving alienating behaviors by the preferred parent.
This recurrent misinformation is a serious false representation of PA theory. No PA scholar—since the seminal
description of PAS by Gardner (1985)—has stated that all children who manifest contact refusal were indoctrinated
to fear the rejected parent by the favored parent. Instead, every pertinent article or book chapter by a PA scholar
explains that some children of high-conflict parents manifest contact refusal, which have several possible causes. Of
course, PA is only one of the possible causes of contact refusal or resist/refuse dynamics.
1.4 | Research hypotheses
Based on what was already known about published misinformation regarding PA, two hypotheses guided the current
research project: First hypothesis: An extensive review of PA literature will produce numerous examples of the same
misinformation, that is, the notion that PA scholars assume that all instances of a child’s contact refusal are caused by
alienating activities of the favored parent. Second hypothesis: Citation analysis will demonstrate a continuous flow of
the same misinformation from early publications to recent publications in the mental health and legal literature. This
research project was examined by a university-based Institutional Review Board, which determined, “IRB approval is
not required.”

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Bernet, Xu, 2023, Cover, Text, Appendix