A 2021 paper on the ethics of psychedelic-assisted therapy has carried a publisher-issued Expression of Concern since 12 March 2026, more than twelve months after the request that prompted it — and as of this writing, in August 2026, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (JHP) and its publisher, Sage, have not announced a final decision. The case is a live, ongoing illustration of a question COPE’s own guidance leaves open: how long can an Expression of Concern (EoC) remain unresolved before it functions, in practice, as an indefinite holding pattern rather than the interim measure it’s designed to be? The regulatory side of the same field has moved considerably faster: FDA finalized its guidance on clinical investigations of psychedelic drugs in July 2026.
What follows distinguishes, throughout, between an allegation, a request, an editorial finding, and a retraction — those are not interchangeable, and the paper has not been retracted.
The paper and the request
The paper, “A Qualitative Exploration of Relational Ethical Challenges and Practices in Psychedelic Healing”, was published in JHP on 16 September 2021 by William Brennan, with co-authors Margo A. Jackson, Katherine MacLean, and Joseph G. Ponterotto. Drawn from Brennan’s doctoral dissertation research, it reports interviews with 23 practitioners of MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy about the ethical boundaries of touch and physical contact in session.
On 27 February 2025, Will Hall and others wrote to the journal requesting retraction. According to the retraction request as reported by Mad in America’s September 2025 account, the grounds included: undisclosed conflicts of interest (Brennan’s role as a clinical consultant to psychedelic-drug developer Cybin, and his own training under practitioners later named in separate sexual-abuse allegations); the omission, from the published version, of dissertation interview content that Hall says described client disrobing, sexual touching, and therapist-reported arousal during sessions, framed in the dissertation as boundary violations but recast in the published paper as therapeutic practice; and Brennan’s own acknowledgment, cited by Hall, that the study lacked what he called “inherent validity.”
These are allegations made in a public retraction request, not findings by the journal, the publisher, or any institution — a distinction this page holds throughout. Separately, Fordham University’s Institutional Review Board reportedly reviewed the underlying conduct and concluded, per Mad in America’s reporting, that it did not fall within the university’s definition of research misconduct. An IRB misconduct review and an editorial integrity review are different processes with different scopes and different questions; a finding in one does not resolve the other, which is part of why the case remains open on the editorial side.
What the Expression of Concern actually says
JHP editor Sarah Kamens had already appended an editor’s note to the paper acknowledging that some of the described practices were “explicitly disallowed by ethical guidelines,” while declining, at that stage, to retract. The formal Expression of Concern followed later: issued 12 March 2026 and attached to the article on Sage’s platform, it states the notice will remain in place “until a final conclusion has been made” regarding an ongoing investigation. Kamens has said the journal is “working in close collaboration with the Sage Research Integrity team,” following “COPE guidelines, industry best practice, and the American Psychological Association ethical principles.”
That is a real, meaningful commitment to a process — but it is also, as worded, open-ended. It names no deadline and no interim milestone, only a final state (“a final conclusion”) that will end it. As of August 2026, five months after the EoC was issued and roughly eighteen months after the original retraction request, no such conclusion has been publicly announced.
What an Expression of Concern is — and isn’t
Under COPE’s retraction guidelines, editors are expected to issue an EoC — rather than retract outright — when there is well-founded reason for concern but the evidence is not yet conclusive, when an investigation is unlikely to be fair or conclusive, when an investigation is underway but a conclusion will not be available for a considerable time, or when institutional investigation of researcher misconduct is unlikely to be forthcoming or timely. COPE’s framework treats the EoC as an interim signal to readers — flagging that a paper’s reliability is in question without yet reaching a verdict — not as a terminal outcome in its own right. See CASRAI’s dictionary entry on expression of concern for the operational definition and worked examples of how EoCs are typically resolved (upgraded to retraction, downgraded to a correction, or removed once an investigation clears the paper).
Nothing in COPE’s guidance sets a maximum duration for an EoC. That silence is deliberate — investigations legitimately vary in length, and a rushed conclusion serves no one — but it also means there is no external clock forcing resolution. A separate, unrelated case in CASRAI’s own reporting, HHS pressing Sage over an Expression of Concern on Sage Open Medicine, shows one of the few external pressures that can shorten that timeline: outside institutional or regulatory attention. No comparable outside pressure has been reported in the JHP case.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 16 September 2021 | Paper published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology |
| 27 February 2025 | Will Hall and others submit a formal retraction request to the journal |
| Before March 2026 | Editor Sarah Kamens appends an editor’s note acknowledging some described practices were “explicitly disallowed by ethical guidelines”; retraction request initially declined |
| 13 September 2025 | Mad in America publishes Hall’s public case for retraction, detailing the omitted-interview allegations |
| 12 March 2026 | Sage issues a formal Expression of Concern on the paper, pending investigation |
| August 2026 (current) | Investigation ongoing; no final decision announced |
Why this matters beyond one paper
For research-integrity offices, journal editors, and anyone relying on the published literature in a fast-moving clinical field, this case is a useful, concrete data point on a real gap in publication-ethics infrastructure: COPE’s process guidance is thorough on when to issue an EoC and how to word one, but largely silent on how long readers, funders, and clinicians should expect one to remain the final word. In psychedelic-assisted therapy specifically — a field moving toward regulatory review with active clinical and training use of published ethics literature — a paper whose reliability is formally in question, but neither corrected nor withdrawn, for going on a year and a half raises practical stakes: institutions building training curricula, IRBs evaluating protocols, and clinicians citing the paper on relational ethics all have to decide, in the meantime, how much weight an EoC-flagged paper should carry.
CASRAI will update this page if Sage or JHP announces a retraction, a correction, or a decision to let the paper stand.
Frequently asked questions
Has the paper been retracted?
No. As of August 2026, it carries a publisher-issued Expression of Concern, not a retraction. An EoC signals unresolved concern pending investigation; it does not itself withdraw a paper’s findings or its citability.
What is the difference between an Expression of Concern and a retraction?
An Expression of Concern is an interim notice attached to a paper while its reliability is under review — the paper remains part of the published record. A retraction is a final editorial determination that the paper (or specific findings within it) should no longer be relied upon, and is typically reserved for confirmed cases of unreliable results, plagiarism, unethical research, or similar serious breaches, per COPE’s guidelines.
Did an institution find research misconduct?
Reporting indicates Fordham University’s IRB reviewed the underlying conduct and concluded it did not meet the university’s definition of research misconduct. That is a distinct process from the journal’s own editorial integrity review, which — per the March 2026 Expression of Concern — remains open.
Who requested the retraction?
Will Hall, joined by others, submitted a formal retraction request to the journal on 27 February 2025, and later published a detailed public case for retraction via Mad in America in September 2025.
Has the journal or the authors responded to the allegations?
JHP editor Sarah Kamens has publicly acknowledged that some of the practices described in the underlying research were, in her words, “explicitly disallowed by ethical guidelines,” and has stated the journal is investigating in collaboration with the Sage Research Integrity team under COPE guidelines. No public statement from the paper’s authors has been identified as part of this review; if one is published, this page will be updated.
