From Michelle Dawson
Centre d’Excellence en Troubles Envahissants du Développement, University of Montreal
I appreciate the premise underlying David Wolman’s welcome feature about the advantages of autism (1 May, p 32). However, the careful, accurate reporting that this subject deserves is sometimes lacking.
For example, our 2007 study using the Raven’s Progressive Matrices neither cited from published epidemiology, nor found using any test, Wolman’s unreferenced claim that three-quarters of autistics score in the range of mental retardation. Wolman paints autistics as having weak central coherence, but findings to the contrary have proliferated, including in studies by researchers Wolman highlights. In 2006 we reported that autistics superior at seeing the trees, so to speak, were also superior at seeing the forest (Brain, vol 129, p 1789).
Careful reading of the scientific literature reveals that autistics are far more complex and interesting, in our strengths and weaknesses, than allowed for by prevailing rigid, repetitive, stereotyped clichés – some of which inexplicably mar Wolman’s article.
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Wolman also wrongly places my research in the context of an ideological and political movement – “autistic pride” – whose leaders have tended to frown on what I do. My work is better understood as applying basic standards of science and ethics to produce accurate information about autistics, which may lead to better, rather than worse, decisions about our future.
My colleague Tyler Cowen calls Wolman’s article “a case study in the cognitive biases of non-autistics”. Such biases are fascinating and worthy of study. But I’m far from the only autistic who has been harmed by inaccurate information and misrepresentations. Finding more of the same within a potentially ground-breaking article is discouraging. Autistics and non-autistics deserve better.
I found Wolman’s article on developments in autistic research very interesting.
However, when discussing concerns over the undue emphasis placed on exceptional people on the autistic spectrum, his use of emotive language merely compounds the current unrealistic view of people with autism as all being savants and prodigies. In fact, there are some very ordinary people with autism out there. The thing is that no one would want to write an article about them – their lives are of no interest to anyone.
One such ordinary person is my older brother. He is autistic and lives in care, relying on other people to guide his daily activities. If funding is cut because of prevailing misconceptions of the autie advantage, it is people like him who will suffer.
The fact is that the autism umbrella encompasses those who must live in care as well as high-functioning non-neurotypical people. Either we have to reclassify those exceptional individuals, or the media needs to represent this condition in a more honest and balanced way.
Bristol, UK
I am autistic. Your article was absolutely right – I love precision. Where are we without it? I do get why people lie, I just like being accurate, so I have no need to lie and I have no time to live a lie.
Autism for me is the key to understanding the next phase in human evolution. Nature naturally shifts along autistic spectrums. Think of autistic people as the real X-Men – a shift away from Homo sapiens. Of course you have to have autism to see this properly, as autism is the key.
If I was to take you on a journey through the doors in my own autistic mind I could show you a field so complex your mind would probably drown before it came close to even penetrating the surface. I am, to sum up, a more finely tuned creature.
London, UK
Montreal, Canada
