[2] She is the author (or co-author) of a number of disputed academic papers, which claim to have found a statistical correlation or causal relationship between abortion and mental health problems.
[3][4][5] Her research has mostly met with a poor reception from her professional colleagues, and at least one of her manuscripts (originally published in Frontiers in Psychology) was retracted from the scientific literature due to not meeting the standards of the journal.
[6] In a separate case, researchers were unable to reproduce Coleman's results on abortion and mental health despite using the same dataset,[7] and have described her findings as "logically inconsistent" and potentially "substantially inflated" by faulty methodology.
[17] The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists noted that Coleman's results conflict with those of four previous literature reviews, all of which found that women who have abortions did not face an increased risk of mental health problems.
The College suggested that Coleman's results were due to her failure to control for pre-existing mental-health problems, which tend to be more prevalent in women having abortions.
[4] An APA panel found that studies by Coleman and her co-authors have "inadequate or inappropriate" controls and don't adequately consider "women's mental health prior to the pregnancy and abortion.
[3] Other researchers were unable to reproduce Coleman's analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey, which she had used to support an association between abortion and depression or substance abuse.
[28] The judge in the case, Jacob James Cunningham, stated: "Dr Coleman's testimony is dismissed as not credible, in a practical sense, completely called into question during cross-examination, nor helpful in assisting the court in defeating the plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction.