One of the maddening aspects of the dismissal of the environmental hypothesis for autism is that the counter-evidence provided is never allowed to be seen in context. The environmental hypothesis is rejected in favor of an ostensibly “pure” genetic hypothesis and that’s that. Evidence for the genetic hypothesis—which is indeed plentiful—is allowed to displace the […]
In working with neurofeedback we find that clinical realities quickly outrun our models. What’s worse, our changing conceptions are not always couched in new terminology that firmly ensconces the new realities and delineates the departure from the past. Sometimes we merely alter our view of words that we have used all along, and must continue […]
Science is the sacred cow of our age (if indeed there are any left), so any attack on the output of the scientific enterprise may be taken as an affront by practitioners of the art. Our concern, however, is not with the occasional forgivable accident or error, the inevitable consequence of research being conducted by […]
Following up on the previous newsletter post by Deborah Stokes, let me add my thoughts on some of the issues. For a long time I believed that there was a natural division within the field between standard neurofeedback training and stimulation. It was to be expected that the field of medicine would balk at relinquishing […]
This is not going to be an article on Intelligent Design. But Intelligent Design is a member of a class of concepts that appear in scientific dialogue without ever having earned their way in the usual fashion of combining theory with evidence. Now Intelligent Design just happens to be a concept that scientists would like […]
The Role of Amateurs in Science
There is one field in which an extensive mutually beneficial relationship has existed between amateurs and professionals. It is in astronomy, and the phenomenon was recently taken up in Science Magazine by John Bohannon (Volume 318, 12 October 2007, pp 192-3). Significantly, this symbiosis is occurring in a science in which we have only limited […]