I’ve referred to the scientifically questionable book my scientifically questionable sensory integration therapist gave me before. It’s name is The Fabric of Autism. Let me walk you through its loss of credibility.
As I mentioned before, TFoA refers to the hypothesis that thiomersal causes autism as accepted fact. That is a very big strike against it. But all the best theories were once fringe hypotheses, and people who believe one fringe hypothesis will often believe another, so I kept reading.
Then TFoA referred to information the author received from patients using Facilitated Communication, accepted as naturally as if the patient spoke. I vaguely remember FC from a psych 101 class I took in 2004: FC was a breakthrough that allowed autistic people to write out their thoughts, thoughts mainstream practioners had denied they even had. People thought to be entirely nonverbal were writing novels. It was a miracle.
Only FC was being used by people who had never learned to read or write. You can pick up verbal language without explicit instruction, but not written. And even if you could, autists were writing full sentences without looking at the letters- and the FC hunt-and-peck method is simply impossible to touch type with. FC went on to fail every double blind trial thrown at it. In the time between introduction and discrediting, several people were sent to jail for sexual abuse, where the only evidence was FC-expressed accusations.
I checked wikipedia, and my recollection was more or less correct. They present it as more controversial and less laughably terrible than my class, and it’s always possible new research was done or the technique has changed since I took my class. Or maybe it just happened to work for these individuals. But given how horribly misused faciliated communication was in the past, I believe the author should note that history and what makes this FC different from the bad old days. Failure to do so is strike two.
Then the book had a good stretch. It posited some plausible mechanisms for how sensory and inner ear problems could hurt the digestive system. Then it tried to do the reverse. I’m well disposed to this sort of thing. Anything that isn’t self-reinforcing will stop. But the mechanism proposed was that poor digestion leads to bad posture, and that causes the endolymphatic sac in the ear to underinflate (this is what we spent so much time on Wednesday).
I can’t prove that doesn’t happen. But I am very, very certain that bad posture would have a lot of other, more noticeable effects, some of which would themselves affect the ear. A mechanism that broad should be accompanied by a list of other expected symptoms- something the user can compare their own symptoms to and see if this offers a parsimonious explanation. TFoA does none of that. It offers no checkpoint for a user to say “oh, this isn’t me” and walk away.
I didn’t consciously decide that that was the last straw, but I haven’t picked up the book since. And while I kept up with my old exercises, I didn’t work on incorporating new ones. This is to my detriment, since the exercises really do seem to help no matter how terrible the science they’re based on is. I have some hypotheses as to why that is, but I can’t share them without committing all the sins I just accused the book of, so they will need to wait for more research.
Aceso Under Glass 