Scientific evidence versus outdated beliefs: A response to Brewin (2016)

Abstract

We find Brewin's (2016) critiques of the narratives, power, and coherence measures in Rubin et al. (2016) without merit; his suggestions for a "revised formulation" (p. 1015) of coherence are contradicted by data readily available in the target article but ignored. We place Brewin's commentary in a historical context and show that it reiterates views of trauma memory fragmentation that are unsupported by data. We evaluate an earlier review of fragmentation of trauma memories (Brewin, 2014), which Brewin uses to support his position in the commentary. We show that it is contradicted by more comprehensive reviews and fails to include several studies that met Brewin's inclusion criteria but provided no support for his position, including 3 studies by the present authors (Rubin, 2011; Rubin, Boals, & Berntsen, 2008; Rubin, Dennis, & Beckham, 2011). In short, the commentary's position does not stand against scientific evidence; attempts to rescue it through arguments unsupported by data advance neither science nor clinical practice. (PsycINFO Database Record