[2] Based on his clinical work with children and families, Gardner introduced the term parental alienation syndrome (PAS), which is now "largely rejected by most credible professionals".
[7] From 1963 until his death, Gardner was a clinical professor at Columbia University's medical school, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
[8][9][10] He assisted the defense team of Margaret Kelly Michaels, which successfully appealed her prison conviction in the Wee Care Nursery School abuse trial.
[11] He has been accused by the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence of expressing sympathy towards people with an attraction to minors.
[12] Further, he has been accused of devising his alienation theory "not based on any research but on his personal beliefs and biases, with an interest in providing a weapon for lawyers seeking to undermine a mother's credibility in court.
"[1] He is said to have estimated deliberate false reporting among mothers at 90%, which experts have disputed, citing research commissioned by the United States Department of Justice that found an actual rate less than 2%.
It has been extensively criticized by scientists and jurists, who describe it as inadmissible in child custody hearings based on both science and law.
Trocme and Bala studied over seven thousand abuse investigations and found that of the allegations that had been ultimately determined to be false, none had come from the children themselves.
[18] Carol S. Bruch, Research Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, implied that Dr. Gardner's description of PAS could inflict emotions on his audience.
"Attorneys frequently select out-of-context material in order to enhance their positions in courts of law... some of these misperceptions and misrepresentations have become so widespread that I considered it judicious to formulate this statement," he wrote.