Well, here we are again, and I’m going to run out of catchy titles for each time ABA International manages to make an ass out of themselves. Once again, they manage to demonstrate a lack of self-awareness so astronomical, that if it had a diagnosis, they themselves would probably label it as pathological. They would be right too.
There’s a clear need for intervention here.
So today, November 14, 2023, ABAI put this out in public for everyone to see. Tl;dr: Association for Behavior Analysis International is accusing Association for Professional Behavior Analysts of plagiarizing their accreditation program.
Their Claims
ABAI’s evidence is that APBA’s standards for accreditation closely resemble their own. A low bar to cross seeing as ABAI is the only other accrediting body for ABA, something ABAI acknowledges, and also we’ll get to that. They define APBA’s crimes as “mosaic plagiarism,” a specific type of plagiarism where there is an attempt to change language to hide that the information has been stolen. This would be essentially paraphrasing someone else’s thoughts and presenting them as your own. One example of this is that APBA has fewer standards and components than ABAI, which ABAI claims is simply their own work arranged differently and consolidated.
ABAI goes on to state that APBA misrepresented their standards on their website. They take issue with the following statements that APBA has made about how their standards differ from ABAI’s:
- ABAI requires “an additional, stand-alone course in basic behavior analysis.” — ABAI wants you all to know that their accreditation standards do not require a stand-alone course in basic behavior analysis. They just require 45 hours of the subject which can be distributed, not necessarily a free-standing course.
- ABAI requires “a tiered, hierarchical model of program recognition leading to accreditation.” — this is a requirement for recognition, not accreditation. These are separate things and some places may have one without the other.
- APBA requires “an additional, stand-alone course in organizational behavior management.” — OBM content is permitted in ABAI’s accreditation system, it’s just not a requirement. Obviously, completely different.
- APBA requires a “capstone project focused on the demonstration of core competencies for practicing behavior analysts.” — ABAI claims that this implies that a capstone wouldn’t meet ABAI’s standards for “a thesis or equivalent,” but it might!
- ABPA requires “active management and evaluation of supervised fieldwork experience, in the event that practicum/fieldwork experience is required by the program.” — ABAI claims that this is not unique to APBA because ABAI requires supervised fieldwork, which is meant to develop practitioners’ skills. An obvious and egregious misrepresentation, you see.
- APBA requires “inclusion of content related to culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion in indicated courses.” — Once again, ABAI allows this content to be present in their accredited courses’ programming, they just don’t require it. Somehow, that makes APBA’s statement that this requirement is unique to their standards false, even though “permitted” and “required” are in fact different things.
- APBA requires a “minimum pass [rate] on the BACB exam.” — ABAI takes issue with this statement because ABAI-accredited programs show an average pass rate of 74-82% compared to the national average of 55-65%. So they don’t have a minimum pass rate set to be accredited, but somehow APBA misrepresented ABAI by stating as such.
What ABAI Wants to Achieve
ABAI states that, while plagiarism is not a legal issue per se, it is an ethical issue– one that they feel ABPA so egregiously violated that they felt compelled to call them out “in the name of the integrity of the accreditation process.” We’ll come back to that one. Their demands are that APBA stop using any of ABAI’s program materials for any sort of inspiration for their accreditation system, including pricing. They want APBA to build it up from scratch and seemingly avoid any similarities to theirs. They also want APBA to “stop making confusing, misleading, and inaccurate points of comparison.”
What is with ABAI and the word “misleading?”
It’s also worth noting here that ABAI further scolds APBA for having never contacted them before or during the creation and announcement of APBA’s accreditation system. So ABAI and APBA have never communicated about any of this, and ABAI’s first course of action was to make a public “letter of concern.”
Perspective-Taking is a Helluva Drug
ABAI cites the Council for Higher Education (CHEA)’s characteristics of an accrediting organization, which are as follows:
- serves institutions and programs with the highest regard for integrity of practice and ethical behavior and demonstrates a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion;
- promotes academic quality and continuous improvement;
- serves higher education, students, and the public by communicating its accreditation decisions;
- makes determinations about academic quality in higher education;
- implements and enforces its standards and policies; and
- acknowledges and affirms the institution and program mission and purposes.
In terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, APBA was one of the first to come out with a formal statement against CESS 2 years ago (as of this post), whereas ABAI took nearly an entire year to draft a pro-CESS manifesto. ABAI also consistently attempts to silence autistic voices and denounce and discredit any criticism of ABA. One of the signers of this most recent letter, Carol Pilgrim, former ABAI president, referred to such concerns as “histrionics” at ABAI’s annual conference in 2022. Irony aside, ABAI felt the need to come at APBA for daring to pride themselves on requiring specific DEI criteria in their accreditation system when ABAI “permits it.” Since they don’t stop anyone from including it, they’re being misrepresented by those who require it.
The letter itself opens with a heartfelt description of ABAI’s passion for developing the field and supporting students on their path to becoming competent practitioners. They even assert that they write “[not] out of fear of competition.” They have been around for decades and the only accreditation system for the field until APBA came around. ABAI also makes sure to note that their accreditation system is “the result of the hard work of the original drafting and thoughtful leadership.”
It seems odd to me that anyone so “committed” to the “development and maturity of the field” wouldn’t be more than happy to spread that development to the realm of accreditation. After all, a scientific field is meant to be constantly growing, searching for and applying new knowledge and adapting to important environmental changes. Our ethics code even recently added an entire section on social media– a phrase that didn’t even exist when the ethics code was first conceived.
Here’s the thing: Since ABAI has seemed to have set a goal of making an ass out of themselves publicly at least once a year for the past several years, they have been bleeding membership. Bleeding membership means bleeding money. They have even attempted to weaponize the fact that people have cancelled memberships and boycotted the conference out of protest by locking non-members out of discussions, elections, and voting opportunities that affect the entire field. APBA, however, has not seen such loss. This might be because they have been doing the opposite of ABAI, fairly consistently sitting on the right side of issues in the field, including the aforementioned condemnation of CESS.
With their statement that this has nothing to do with competition, methinks thou dost protest too much. I think this has everything to do with competition and the fact that people sick of ABAI’s shit are turning to APBA for everything ABAI used to provide: access to academic and career development, career center, and of course, accreditation. This screams of a desperate attempt to stay relevant without actually updating anything. ABAI continuously represents a losing battle between the old guard and actual progressive motion in the field. Most of the things ABAI claims are gross misrepresentations by APBA are objectively technicalities at the absolute worst. The authors of the letter even admit that they sought out counsel to “better understand their … rights.” I call bullshit. They sought counsel to see what they could get away with with even a modicum of plausibility. They’re mad that APBA came to the party in the same dress, and the dress looked better on APBA.
Their suggestion that APBA crossed such an ethical line that it moved them to action is laughable considering their behavior recently. Along with ABAI’s poorly researched and even worse defense of CESS, there are a myriad of conflicts of interest between them and the Judge Rotenberg Center. In addition, they consistently dismiss concerns by the autistic community and silence autistic practitioners and refuse to admit or acknowledge the connection between conversation therapy and Lovaas. If you’re going to talk about ethical lines calling for action, then APBA has a hell of a lot more to work with than ABAI.
ABAI, do you really want to start this?
Anyway, here’s how to become a member of APBA, and their annual conference is usually in March. See ya there?