Johnny Matson

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Johnny Lee Matson (born June 23, 1951, in Watseka, Illinois) is an American psychologist and former professor of psychology at Louisiana State University (LSU). He studied at Eastern Illinois University, earning a BS in Psychology and Biology and an MS in Counseling Psychology, then earned a PhD in Psychology from Indiana State University in 1976. After an internship at Central Louisiana State Hospital, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1978–1981), then at Northern Illinois University before joining LSU in 1985. He is married and has two children.

Matson’s research focused on development, assessment, and treatment of co-occurring conditions in people with developmental disabilities, including autism. He worked on topics such as social skills, problem behavior, and medication side effects, and helped develop assessment tools like the Psychopathology Inventory for Mentally Retarded Adults (PIMRA), the Questions About Behavior Function (QABF), and the Functional Assessment for Multiple Causality (FACT). He advocated using indirect measures to assess symptoms and progress.

However, Matson’s career has been controversial. Since 2015, researchers have questioned his high rate of self-published papers and self-citations, as well as his peer-review practices as an editor. In 2023, 24 of his papers were retracted for reasons including undisclosed conflicts of interest, duplicated methodology, and concerns about the peer-review process. Matson responded by saying the issue affected only a small number of articles and defended self-citations.