Autism Spectrum Disorder

Five Stars
Amazing book, I’m so glad I’m taking this class.

A profoundly ignorant and dis-educational account of the subject, however well-meaning the author may be.
I don’t want to be unkind to the author who has clearly devoted much time and effort and study to the subject and to writing this book. And it is not entirely her own fault that she entered a field where others parade their ignorance as supposed expertise and then she as an upcoming “professor” learns to parrot the same as likewise supposed expertise. Such is the failure of our modern scientific community with its grossly flawed methods of assessment and selection (as explained in free Chapter 1 of the book you can find on the internet by searching for Experts Catastrophe Charlatanism).I’m sure that there is a lot in Jill Boucher’s book that is correct. But that is swamped by the importance of what is not. I’ll just give a few instances here.Firstly the whole notion that autism is a “disorder” is pseudoscientific claptrap completely lacking in even the slightest evidential basis and instead violently contrary to all the considerable evidence that is is not. This is fully discussed in free Chapter 2 of the Experts Catastrophe Charlatanism book (which is actually titled just “Experts Catastrophe” but searching for that won’t find it for you at present – will eventually be here on Amazon).Secondly, Dr Boucher’s book makes no mention of mercury (other than thimerosal), not even in her quite long list on pages 112-3 . And yet very substantial evidence makes clear beyond reasonable doubt that mercury (though not from vaccines) is now THE most important factor in autism causation (and caused a tenfoldish increase of autism). Again, this is fully reviewed in free Chapter 3 of the Experts Catastrophe Charlatanism book. (I would gladly just copy out the whole of these chapters on this page but it might get a bit long with many well-justified thousands of words!)Another major failing of the book is the question of whether there has been a real increase of autism. Dr Boucher at least does not endorse the false notion advanced by some purported experts, that an increase can be ruled out. Rather she sits on the wall, considering the evidence unclear either way. And yet the evidence is already quite decisive on the matter, as explained in detail in the aforesaid free Chapter 3, that there has been a tenfoldish increase caused by dental mercury. And a lot of bad effort has gone into covering this up because it is not exactly flattering to those so-called experts who caused that cause and huge catastrophe.Another example is the short dismissal of a social class connection on page 75. In reality Clarke 1993 showed that there were very strong (with very high statistical significance) relationships to social class, but involving starkly bimodal distributions which just get muddled together in the would-be-competent analyses by others. (Full details in free Chapter 7 pages 216-9 of Experts Catastrophe Charlatanism book.)This is all in the published and indexed literature so why does this professor make no mention of it? Why bother publishing in a peer-reviewed PsycInfo-indexed journal when it just gets ignored by “experts” anyway? (Though to be fair to Dr Boucher, she does indicate some doubt of the non-connection on page 85.)Her page 112-3 list of environmentals meanwhile DOES include air pollution from road traffic even though that is easily demonstrated to be non-causal, as per free Chapter 6 of the Experts Catastrophe Charlatanism book at pages 186-8.Again, her book ironically starts with comments about choice of terminology, when its very title is a fine example of gross evidence-defying pseudo-scientific mis-terminology (which she then harmfully uses throughout the book). The Preface states she tries to “take a middle line”, and always advises her students to be “sensitive to the preferred terminology of the person they are talking to”. Well, no. You have to completely reject the false terminology of “disorder” and “persons “with” autism”. After more than 70 years no-one has come up with any remotely solid way to sort persons into those “with” and those “without” autism. And that’s because there is no such distinction and the language is wholly misleading, wholly dis-scientfic, and humungously dis-enlightening. Autism is hard enough to understand even without using pseudic terminology which makes it imposslble to understand.To her credit Dr Boucher does use the ideal referencing system, such as (Author, 2014), and has carefully compiled much valid information here. This can be a somewhat useful book as long as the readers are aware of its very major defects such as I have specified here. Not least the consistent use of completely unacceptable pseudo-scientific language of “disorder”, “ASD”, and “with autism”. The book urgently needs a third edition to correct these severe faults.

Very easy reading and up to date. Worthwhile as a reference.