HIGHLY CITED ARTICLES IN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHIATRY: ASSESSMENT WITH A QUALITY AND ERROR RATING SCALE

Abstract

ABSTRACTIntroductionEvolutionary psychiatry is a rapidly growing field that emphasizes the value of evolutionary explanations for traits that make individuals vulnerable to mental disorders. Some articles that apply evolutionary theory to psychiatric disorders make errors, such as viewing a disease as if it is an adaptation. We assessed the quantity of errors in the most widely cited articles on evolutionary psychiatry and its relationship to citation frequencyMethodsTwo reviewers searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar on September 8, 2023, using specific search terms related to “evolution” and “psychiatry”, in order to find the most highly cited articles in the field. Based on the work of Nesse, we developed a measure for assessing the number of errors and overall quality in evolutionary psychiatry articles. We applied the measure to the 20 most highly cited articles, and calculated the correlations between article quality and number of errors with number of citations.ResultsTwenty highly cited articles, with a mean citation count of 758.95 and publication year range from 1964 to 2011, were rated. While the most highly cited articles had good quality on average, they also made important errors. There was no significant correlation of article quality or article errors and citation count.ConclusionHighly cited articles in evolutionary psychiatry demonstrated strengths but also exhibited weaknesses. The lack of a relationship of quality and error scores with citation rates suggests that other factors influence such citations. Future research should focus on achieving consensus on how best to assess the quality of evolutionary psychiatry articles and on what errors should be avoided.