''Questionable practices'' in Maxine Aston's Work

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I rather like that idea, sadly I doubt if a journal editor would force Maxine to formally withdraw her articles if they got slammed when a serious expert reviews them.

My problem with Maxine is that she refuses to enter into reasonable debate on a level playing field on the subject of her work.

I think that she does not clearly show her research methodology so who knows quite how she comes up with her ideas. I think that Maxine should learn some acceptance of the fact that if you work in a contraversal field that you must be transparent and be willing to prove that you are honest. For instance if you work in a field where your work gives you access to something with clear misuse potential then you have to accpet that you are not allowed to do things like carry a unsearched bag in and out of your place of work.

In the same way Maxine needs to accept that she needs to be more transparent, we should not trust blindly any researcher. We have a duty to ourselves and others to ask and examine the character and work of autism researchers.

I would like to ask our readers to consider something else, here on WP we have quite a few PhD educated scientists and PhD students in the sciences. But would you the general public want to just blindly trust the WP science team to make life and death choices for you without you having the right to question what and how they are making their choices. My answer would be a simple no.

CRCR replied to me twice saying they will try to help.

That Family Court Review Article is so sloppily written that it can get slammed very easily. Maybe we can Ask Dr. Attwood what he thinks about Sheilla Jenning's and Aston's statement that living with an AS partner causes immunodeficiency. That article cited Attwood, Karen Rodman, and Aston. How does Attwood feel about being grouped with these two?



You said it much better than I. How do we put into clear soundbites palatable to the general public?

Fair enough.

Last edited by Jono on 01 Jul 2009, 8:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly.


Of course not. Such men would have to get some other disorder like Hercules Affective Deprivation Disorder, or HADD as they say in they say in the self proclaimed expert for money game.

Of course whether they have got HADD or CADD they are at risk of MADD, or Monetary Asset Deprivation Disorder, a condition caused by being scammed into spending your money on worthless non expertise posing as counselling services.

WOW just wo this women is an insult to psychologists everywhere
her condition is by far the most stupid sounding one ever I want to read on that when I get some rest hehe
my first thoughts were, wow what a b**** not apprpriate I know but these shamdoctos deserve a punch in the face

wow folks you aspies are sooo smart!! !! !

everyone i show my Maxine Aston critique too either don't get it or, the people who have taken a Research class in college tend to immediately say "she never even got IRB approval!! !" you aspies are so smart. critical thinkers. wow. love u all

Just trying to help .

Very witty and a hilariously funny spoof, Pandd! I agree with you totally. You can make up a name like Cassandra Deprivation Disorder for just about anything.
The Hercules Affective Deprivation Disorder must be men who do not feel effective enough in the eyes of women so they develop the symptoms of Sunlight Affective Deprivation Disorder but it's not sunlight that causes it. I wonder if this really is the male version of CADD? It's a male friendly name, for sure.
Monetary Asset Affective Deprivation Disorder is one I definitely have
I am soooo depressed because I am being deprived of money. Same thing would happen to Aston if her book didn't sell.
hahaha

yes, i can assure you that without her money she would get very depressed indeed.

People who aren't getting their emotional needs met can say "I have CADD" and get them met that way if the people around them know what that is and want to help and know how to respond.

Now.

I want this same thing to apply with me replacing CADD with...

MAADD

I want to be able to go up to people who know what MAADD is and have them heal me with money. That would be awesome! Hell YEAH!!

I wonder if anybody can check her marriage and her divorce certificate. Maybe we can find some inconsistencies in her narrative about her self. Has she ever said how long she has been "researching"? What does she say about her husband? If she is such an expert at relationships, why couldn't she fix her own marriage? Maybe we as the AS and AC community can appeal to Jessica Kingsley Publishing and threaten to boycott their books if they don't clarify that Aston is not an academic researcher. Maybe we can stage a massive ebay protest - putting all our Jessica Kingsley Publishing books on ebay, so that their profits go down?

She seems to think that it is impossible to fix an AS/NT marriage--the best thing for it is divorce.

Another question to ask Maxine Aston is which research reporting guidelines she uses in her "academic research." They usually "specify a minimum set of items required for a clear and transparent account of what was done and what was found in a research study, reflecting, in particular, issues that might introduce bias into the research.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/researc ... guide.html

I am sure that British divorce cases are done in closed court, so I am unsure if you will ever be able to get the details of Maxine's own divorce.

I have a better suggestion regarding her book, get one of the AS community to examine the book do the following. You will need someone who is an expert on the written english langauge.

1. Proof read it and check the number of typos and the amount of bad gramma in it.
2. Check the facts of the book, each time Maxine makes a statement then see if you can find any other data in the literature which goes against it.
3. Publish a review and point out any errors in the book.

Or..

WP members can get together and write a critique of it instead and send it around.

Just read Aston's first article--"Growing Up in an Asperger Family". Wow. Just...

She (or her editor) is good at the "storytelling" aspects of writing. Many people who publish in professional journals are not. That is the only good thing I can say about her.

Her article is very emotional, very accusatory. Her "case study" is of a teenager living with parents Aston herself had diagnosed with Asperger's; she blames the teenager's psychological problems on having to deal with AS parents. (She apparently didn't even do a differential dx on the teenager. With two AS parents, it would be logical to consider that she has AS traits, too--easy to miss in a girl, and AS women have been connected to vulnerability to eating disorders and self-injury. Aston doesn't even consider this possibility.)

Maybe it's petty of me, but Aston's grammar sucks too. I'm finding three or four style or grammar errors per paragraph. I write better than that when I'm not even checking my grammar. This is a published article.

The study she quotes? No control group, evidently. Worthless, almost certainly. Oh, and she was the one who did the study. Nice academic responsibility there.

Check the references, too. First of all: Seven references. Four-page paper. I use more than that when I am writing a research report, and I'm an undergrad. Only two of them are actually from journals (i.e., primary sources); one of them is Aston's article and the other is a general piece that describes autism as "strongly genetic" (duh). Four are books--written not for professionals but for the everyday reader (i.e., not scholarly work, but written for the general public; these types of sources are great for basic information but one cannot expect them to contain up-to-date research or responsible science... one of them is Karen Rodman's book, too). The seventh source is a Web site.

This is pretty irresponsible. If I wrote an article like this, my professor would probably circle a bunch of grammar errors and write "Please Support This Claim" all over it. And, like I said, I'm an undergrad. They don't expect all that much of me.