Research on PA is not “scientific”
Clinical, legal, and scientific evidence on PA has accumulated for over 35 years. There have been over 1,200 scholarly papers published on the topic, and the empirical research on the topic has expanded greatly over the last few years, leading to what has been considered a “blossoming” of the scientific field. 
Harman, J. J., Bernet, W., & Harman, J. (2019). Parental alienation: The blossoming of a field of study. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 212-217.

PA is a legal defense used by abusive fathers to get custody of their children and get out of abuse allegations
Over half of appellate cases in the U.S. where parental alienation was found to have occurred had no allegation of abuse made against the alienated parent. Courts were also not found to place children in the custody of actively abusing parents--the took custody away from parents who had severely abused their children by turning them against their alienated parent. Research consistently finds that there are no gender differences in who is likely to be an alienated parent: it is a form of abuse that does not discriminate.
​Harman, J. J., & Lorandos, D. (2020). Allegations of family violence in court: How parental alienation affects judicial outcomes. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law.
Mothers do not alienate children: they protect them from abusive fathers
Parents who use their child as a weapon against the other parent, regardless of gender, are committing child psychological abuse. There are ways to protect children from abuse without psychologically harming children. It is a double standard to accept and justify a mother’s psychological abuse while sanctioning fathers for the same behavior.
Harman, J. J., Kruk, E., & Hines, D. (2018). Parental alienating behaviors: An unacknowledged form of family violence. Psychological Bulletin, 144, 1275-1299.
​PA should be not be recognized because it will be misused by abusers
For any type of abuse, there is always a risk of abusers pretending to be victims. This risk creates the need for clear standards and reliable screening and assessment tools to prevent misuse. The Five-Factor model provides that standard by requiring that abuse and neglect are not present before parental alienation can be diagnosed.  
Freeman, B. (2020) The psychosocial assessment of contact refusal.
In D. Lorandos, & W. Bernet, Parental alienation: Science & Law, 44-81. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, LTD. (Describes a scientific consensus of research into a Five-Factor model for the differential diagnosis of PA)
PA theory was created by a “pedophile"
Dr. Richard Gardner coined the phrase “parental alienation syndrome.” His clinical descriptions of sexually abused children has been mischaracterized by child abuse and domestic violence advocates to portray him as a pedophile. Such advocates have engaged in ad hominem attacks by taking statements from his writings out of context in order to further an agenda that denies that PA is real.
Harman, J. J., & Lorandos, D. (2020). Allegations of family violence in court: How parental alienation affects judicial outcomes. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law.

PA isn't in the DSM-5
There has been discussion and debate for several years as to whether parental alienation (PA) should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). The proposal that PA should be considered a formal diagnosis was submitted to the DSM-5 Task Force in 2008, was published in The American Journal of Family Therapy (Bernet et al. 2010), and ultimately was published as a monograph (Bernet et al. 2010). Basically, we recommended that PA be included in DSM-5 as either a mental disorder in the front part of the book or as a relational problem in the chapter of DSM-5 titled “Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention,” or as a proposed diagnosis in the chapter of DSM-5 titled “Conditions for Further Study.”
In response to our proposal, senior personnel of the DSM-5 Task Force told us that they did not want PA to be a separate diagnosis with its own code number. They thought that PA was an example of a diagnosis that already existed, parent-child relational problem. With the recent publication of DSM-5, we are pleased to see that PA can now be identified and coded in several different ways using new diagnostic terminology. Although the actual words “parental alienation” do not appear, the spirit of PA is strong and well represented in DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013). If a clinical or forensic practitioner determines that a child is affected by PA, the following diagnoses should be considered:
  • Parent-child relational problem now features discussion in the text of DSM-5 (p.715).
  • Child affected by parental relationship distress is an important new diagnosis in DSM-5 (p.716). 
  • Child psychological abuse is another new diagnosis in DSM-5 (p. 719).
Bernet, W. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry News,  September/October 2013 Volume 44, Issue 5.
PA is "junk science"
The meme that PA is "junk science" was coined by Paul J. Fink, an influential psychiatrist, in 2003. In 2010, Fink wrote in his column in Clinical Psychiatry the claim that "fathers' rights groups who don't like to be interfered with when they are sexually abusing their children...petitioned the DSM task force to include PA in the publication." Fink later retracted this statement and said , "I do not deny that PA occurs and that a lot of people are hurt when there is an alienator".
​Bernet, William. Judges Journal,  Summer 2015.
PA has not been recognized by proffesional associations
Leading mental health and legal organizations have acknowledged the reality of PA through their publications, national & international meetings, and educational programs for their members. For example:
  • The ABA published a book by S. Clawar, Children Held Hostage (1st ed. 1991; 2nd ed. 2013), an exhaustive study of 1,000 families in which the children were brainwashed to dislike and reject on eof their parents.
  • The American Psychological Association published Elizabeth M. Ellis's Divorce Wars: Interventions with Families in Conflict (2000) which discusses in detail assessment and treatment of PA.
  • The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published ​Practice Parameters for Child Custody Evaluators (1997) which was considered an "AACAP Official Action." That document refers explictly to "parental alienation" and explains the phenomenon. 
​​​Bernet, William. Judges Journal,  Summer 2015 Vol. 54 No. 3.
Advocates for PA say that abuse allegations are always false
It is flatly incorrect to allege that PA advocates say that custodial parents and children are always lying when they make allegations of abuse PA scholars have written extensively about the importance of telling the difference between alienation (when the child's rejection of a parent is driven by the false belief that the parent is evil or dangerous) and estrangement (when the child's rejection of a parent is driven by a history of actual abuse or neglect). Ruling out actual abuse or neglect is an essential step in making a determination of PA.
​​​Bernet, William. Judges Journal,  Summer 2015 Vol. 54 No. 3.
The alienated parent must be abusive for a child to reject them so strongly
Children who are abused by a parent engage in behaviors to preserve and protect the relationship: they do not seek to destroy it. Children in foster care yearn for their birth parents and minimize the maltreatment that their birth parents perpetrated against them. The rejection of a healthy parent is not normal and is an outcome that is encouraged by the alienating parent.
Baker, A. J. L., Creegan, A., Quinones, A., & Rozelle, L. (2016). Foster children’s views of their parents: A review of the literature. Children and Youth Services Review, 67, 177-183.
​Richard Gardner wasn't a real professor at Columbia university, his works were
​self-published and other personal attacks oN Gardner
Richard Gardner himself answered the accusations in 1999 in an article entitled MISPERCEPTIONS VERSUS FACTS ABOUT. In his introduction, he writes:
This document has been prepared to provide corrections for certain misrepresentations and misperceptions of some of my contributions. There have been unfortunate misinterpretations of some of my positions on a variety of issues. Some of these originated from conflicts in the legal arena, where attorneys frequently select out-of-context material in order to enhance their positions in a court of law. This is the nature of the adversary system, and it is one of the causes of the controversy that sometimes surround my contributions. Some of these misperceptions and misrepresentations have become so widespread that I considered it judicious to formulate this statement.
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