Thanks Jypsy, I'll show it to everyone.

Hi Michelle,

By the way, is that Judy Singer from ASPAR, the same one who is a mainstay on the ISNT.

You said “Clare's observations re the connection between defamation and diagnosis are bang on. Even AutCom, who you mention, has been treated a great deal more politely and accurately (see the Clarifying Comments 2000 paper).”

Unfortunately that is accurate.

I was discussing general behaviorist opinion on the promotion thing, not certifiable reality.

You said “How much good critical writing about ABA have you seen in the public?”

Come to think of it, none. Its even more of the same in most professional critiques.

I have never met or heard Dr. Maurice speak, nor do I recall any advice on selling ABA, although I am sure that it exists.

You said “My conclusion is that maybe behaviourists are very thin-skinned re any criticism whatsoever, especially if it comes from outside the field, and exponentially more so if it comes from a person who uses the very behaviours they "treat" to educate herself and form a critique.”

You are over generalizing more than I can agree with. Behaviorists must be open to somewhat open to criticism if we are to succeed.

You said “Or maybe it's insecurity: if behaviourists don't know other fields, they will not want to hear from them. Easier just to invalidate the other fields from afar. Dr Mulick, for instance, made a large sweeping statement about all cognitive scientists.”

I take note.

You said “Interesting that Dr Maurice was "attacked" by accusations that her kids weren't really autistic. Now, anyone who opposes any aspect of ABA is accused either of not having "really" autistic kids (if parents), or of not really being autistic (if autistic). The irony isn't mine, John; it just arises from an accurate description of reality.”

Yes, the irony is not lost on me. Nor is the irony of the irony, so to speak. I don’t know though…..you claim that Twain was too sophisticated for you, but I think you would have done him proud.

You said “Any behaviourist could earn my support by arguing with my position and winning. I'm not wedded to a particular field. I work in cognitive science just now because my criticisms in this area were greeted not with invective but with the challenge, to me, can I prove it?”

Yes and that is the way it should be. Good for the cognitivists. And unfortunately your most active behaviorist partner/adversary/student/whatever on this site is barely old enough to legally drink, let alone incline you to DTT and ABA.

John,

You may be young but when it comes to recognizing and practicing truth, logic and respect here you seem wise beyond your years. Thanx for your input here, it has been such a wonderful change of pace to observe the intelligent, factual, respectful give and take that has gone on here.
-jypsy

John wrote, "At least one professor made a personal attack upon Maurice. You can read about it in the book she edited “Making a Difference”. "

Maurice writes in said book - and I think this must be the reference you mean - "One California authority, author of one of the ubiquitous "let's describe the symptoms of autism one more time" books, publicly derided my children, who she has never met, and mocked the notion of their recovery."

Evidently this anonymous authority did not do so in print or in a public statement. So it's impossible to tell what precisely this "derision" consisted of.

But if "mocking the notion of their recovery" means expressing scepticism about claims that any autistic child has become 100% Normal - then I for one am certainly guilty of that.

It is not, however, the same as a personal attack on Maurice or her children.

Maurice devotes a good page in the same introduction to attacking Shirley Cohen for the heinous crime of writing about Lovaas-style ABA as one possible treatment among many, and appears to accuse her of having an especially evil plan to covertly attack ABA by "damning it with faint praise".

So I have a suspicion that Maurice's "derision" threshold may be rather low (she can also clearly give as good as she gets, given how insulting she is in that introduction towards anyone she deems to be an enemy or critic).

Incidentally, if one may make an inference from http://www.mnip-net.org/ddlead.nsf/linkview/Recovery (her "autism = cancer" piece) the "California authority" in question is Bryna Siegel. Siegel is - in print, at least - a moderate ABA supporter.

In any case, so far as I know, no authority in the autism field has gone on record in print or on the net and accused Maurice of a "personality disorder", or of, say, having conned someone in the government into thinking her children were autistic so that she could "live off" the autism field.

If you know of a counter-example, I stand to be corrected.

Edited by author 05-03-2004 06:23 PM
John wrote, "Behaviorists must be open to somewhat open to criticism if we are to succeed. "

Indeed. And I wouldn't say that there's anything inherent in behavioural theory per se that requires behaviourists to be hostile to autistic people with opinions.

In fact, given the emphasis on scientific objectivity, you behaviorists should be particularly interested in being open to criticism and scientific discussion.

Which seems to be where you as an individual are coming from (and as jypsy says, it's a refreshing thing to see).

However, there does appears to be a dominant culture within the field of ABA which is very hostile, in a wholly unscientific way, to the idea of autistic people daring to disagree.

If that wasn't so, I doubt very much that Mulick et al would feel comfortable expressing themselves in the way they just have.

As Michelle described, the Feminine Boy Project was subject to widespread criticism on ethical grounds from within the behavioural field, led by Donald Baer.

There seems no scientific reason why the use of ABA to try to make autistic children "indistinguishable from their normal peers" shouldn't be subject to exactly the same sort of criticism by behaviourists, for exactly the same reasons.

But, for whatever reason, it doesn't appear to be happening at the moment.

Edited by author 05-03-2004 08:31 PM
Hi John,

Of course I shouldn't have generalized about thin-skinned behaviourists. That's merely my experience with, and my reading of, many behaviourists in autism, and I don't pretend to know why they behave as they do.

I forgot to mention that the assumption that autistics (in this case all autistics across the spectrum) who do not get ABA deteriorate is still rolling along unopposed (by anyone else) in Auton.

Dr Smith was working with the Greenspan gang going back to--what--2001?, to organize an ABA vs DRI controlled trial. There would be no reason for this one not to be randomized. But, you can just imagine the diplomatic problems. Never mind funding, logistics, etc. Anyone know what came of this, or if it's still on?

Re Dr Lovaas' elusive aversives data, there aren't a lot of choices. Either the data are good, and one concludes that aversives were an essential "active ingredient" in obtaining Dr Lovaas' big number; or the data aren't good, and Dr Lovaas cited and referenced them anyway, and drew conclusions from them. I'm not sure how conscientious journal reviewers and editors are required to be. But if the data are suspect, then Dr Lovaas would either be incompetent or dishonest, or I suppose both.

In what I wrote I tried to assume competency and honesty so long as I didn't have direct evidence to the contrary. Your point that the data weren't published is important, but it wasn't enough for me to even comment on the veracity of the whole within-subjects-replication-design.

The project where the most data are easily available is the FBP. The JABA case study is awash with data. You have the actual graphs. I'm not sure I've seen an autism case study anywhere near as thorough.

Here's Dr Maurice giving her inspirational speech to the behaviour analysts: http://www.behavior.org/autism/Catherine_Maurice.pdf , wherein the relative merits of behaviourist (organisms emiting whatever) and popular (emotional) language are discussed. There's also a lesson in the quantitative difference between JABA and Reader's Digest.

I have a question, John. I noticed your radical behaviourist rejection of the medical model. This would require you to reject the "medically necessary" label for ABA in autism. Isn't "medically necessary" kind of anti-behaviourist? I'm totally guessing here; I haven't read my radical behaviourist primer for a while, and given my advanced age, need prompting.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Thanks jypsy. Incidentally, it was your site that first connected me to other folks like David’s homepage, Autistics.org., NAA, and many others. This has had a huge effect on my perspective.

Hi Larry,
 
Most research, even the best Multiple Baseline Design or the tightest Solomon four group design will have some flaws. Even a novice can spot them. Imagine what a Frank Gresham could do. I could no doubt find some flaws in L-Carnosine research if I looked. Also a blind, control-grouped study may be totally inappropriate to your specific independent variable. This design logic makes sense in medicinal research and is depending on how it is actually used, a very strong design.

You wrote “Show me an ABA study with even a control group...”

(Lovaas, 1987; Smith, Groen, & Wynn, 2000; Eikseth, Smith, & Jahr, 2002) to name a few. All being discrete-trial research having control groups and quasi-random or random assignment.

Since the majority of ABA autism research is published in behaviorist journals which typically encourage single subject designs as opposed to group design logic, we see much more research occurring in this sort of format. This method is no less accurate provided it is done with a design logic that shows experimental control. The various virtues of the two design types are discussed elsewhere so I will not go into it here.

This is a very, very short list of single subject ABA research including some PRT and Incidental teaching, since you said “ABA”.

(Grindle, & Remington, 2002; Sigafoos, & Saggers, 1995; Newman, Needelman, & Reinecke, 2002; Woods, 1987; Koegel, & Carter, 2003; Weiss, & Harris, 2001; Kok, Kong, & Tan, 2002)

Also, this is some research where DTT is directly compared to other ABA methods.
 
(Delprato, 2001; Miranda-Linne, & Melin 1992; Charlop-Christy, &Carpenter, 2000)

I restricted this to peer reviewed journals and only used DTT, PRT, and Incidental Teaching. And even then I didn’t even try to put in everything. Just to give you a rough idea on ABA’s research base, a student I know just completed a review of all research articles in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (perhaps ABA’s flagship journal). She found over 900 studies. Many of these include persons with developmental disabilities including autism. And this is only one journal…

In case anyone's puzzled about where two-thirds (messages 257 to 700-and-some), of this comment board went, ask my boss...there was a glitch. He's working on it. Apologies all 'round.

According to the QT Webmaster, due to data error in this thread messages 257 to 725 cannot be restored to this board. We do have copies of all messages posted here, so no one's contributions have been lost. We'll make these publicly available as soon as possible.

For further discussion in this thread, please refer to: http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7

Edited by author 07-03-2004 01:48 AM
After losing most of this board to a QT computer glitch, the good news is we've entirely restored messages 461 through 725 (to be published shortly).

Now I'm hoping that one of our "digest" subscribers will help fill in the blanks, namely the personal edits in messages 258 to 460 (which are not delivered to those who receive individual emails - such as myself).

If anyone has digest versions which include the above messages, please email me directly at nexus23@sentex.net

Many thanks.

Ralph Smith
naacanada

One of our subscribers very helpfully pointed out that digest versions do not include message numbers, only dates. So here's a second request to subscribers in this discussion board: if you happen to have digest copies of messages posted here between May 4 and May 19, 2004, I'd be very glad to hear from you. Please email me directly at: nexus23@sentex.net

And yet again, the current discussion board for "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists" is here: http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7