Help with Honest Hype

My daughter just informed me that people won't read my blog if it does not have hype because people like human conflict and readers will not have the attention span to read through a bunch of dry commentary about the sloppy and meager body of research related to autism. She is into writing and journalism and after hearing her out, it does make sense in this fast paced information age. This will be a challenge because the purpose of this site is to not incite emotions but to educate reader about the exaggerated claims being made by even the most popular and highly recommended producers of ASD interventions. The most popular interventions, including EIBI or Lovaas type programs based on the principals of Applied Behavior Analysis fall into this category. This is unfortunate for me because that have a rather "passionate" and organized body of advocates including parent advocates who have been carefully groomed and fed only the information producers want them to know about. Close behind them is RDI and Greenspan when considering only the mainstream interventions. They do not lie. They are not quacks. They use more nuanced methods which, for the proponents of the Lovaas products, are part of an aggressive marketing campaign for the past 15 plus years -designed to get "mainstream" acceptance of treatments that are in reality "helpful for some" but problematic on several levels. The EIBI strategy includes exploitation of the fact that the average parent or public service professional lacks the scientific background to tell the difference between good science and science that, well makes claims and "suggestions" that are not consistent with their data. There are several sources in the scientific literature as well as mainstream domains, to support my conclusions. I have just begun this site but eventually all of these sources will be made available for review and discussion.


In the mean time, I am wondering where to start. Do you want to hear about the many "strategies" producers use to influence your opinion or do you want to talk about the problems with the research and given those problems what the data can tell us-when hype is removed?

Dr. Good, Bad and Ugly