Why I no Longer Think Autism is a Spectrum

I would not consider Uta Frith an expert or even a key person on the subject, despite that this is what she is, since she has had the, frankly, nasty habit of endorsing numerous different cognitive theories even when no clear empirical basis could be provided for any of them. The nasty part also, according to a PhD student who had the joy of working with her on procuring case studies for her dyslexia model, extends to her character. E.g She was very keen on framing dyslexia as a disorder of visual processing and went even as far as to categorically deny dyslexic people the ability to drive cars. That model, also, fell apart. So, with no working models or innovations ever brought forward, one might ask why Uta Frith actually ended up commanding so much of pediatric psychology. Methinks, the ties might be more legal and financial than scientific but I’m not willing to enter conspiracytown here. Notably, she insists on autism being something you’re born with. A claim that ALSO lacks empirical verification. Cambridge is known to receive a lot of cash, industrial grants they call, from pharmaceutics.

The spectrum notion, for example, has always been meaningless when no uniting primary mechanism can be demonstrated; a spectrum of what exactly? It can’t be endophenomenological because that, precisely, would require a uniting framework which we don’t have. It also easily lends itself to the Sorites paradoxon meaning that everyone eventually ends up on the spectrum. By that logic, everyone has a Schizophrenia spectrum disorder or everyone is, in some ways, intellectually disabled.

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