Some Retraction Watch readers may recall this episode, recounted in a recent op-ed by Lew Powell:
During the 1980s and early ’90s a wave of nonexistent “satanic ritual abuse” claims shut down scores of day cares such as Little Rascals, McMartin in California and Fells Acres in Massachusetts. In virtually every instance the charges lacked any basis in fact. Today no reputable psychologist or other social scientist will argue otherwise. The defendants were innocent victims of a “moral panic” that bore striking similarities to the Salem witch hunts 300 years earlier.
Psychologist Richard Noll found the charges troubling too, so he wrote a piece last year for Psychiatric Times because: Continue reading Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
