Stephen chides me for carelessness in my reading of the page I cited in Massie et al's *Lives Across Time: Growing Up* (p. 24): http://tinyurl.com/b9mtkp
He is, of course, absolutely right to do so. I saw that Massie and his assistants had also viewed "a comparison group of films of normal children", and with Joan's words that without blind controls "his research would be useless" before me I unthinkingly took it that they *were* blind. But Massie does not say this on the page I cited. So I second this (implied) request of Stephen's for Joan to settle the matter: >Perhaps Joan, who seems to be familiar with Massie's work, >could tell us if such data exists, and perhaps send us relevant >excerpts. Until then, I'm going to withhold judgement on the issue. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org ************************************************************ Re:[tips] Massie and autism sblack Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:10:48 -0800 On 9 Feb 2009 at 5:13, Allen Esterson wrote: > On 8 February 2009 Joan Warmbold wrote in reply to my premature suggestion > that Massie may not have included blind controls: > Of course the > observers were not told what the future status of the infants were! > If that was not the case, his research would be useless. Allen then says: > I should have spent more time checking online, and so found the answer, > such as here: > > Henry Massie and Nathan Szajnberg: Lives Across Time: Growing Up (p. 24): > > http://tinyurl.com/b9mtkp > I'm puzzled by this response, as it appears to indicate Allen's agreement that Massie did indeed include blind controls. Yet the url posted by Allen takes me to p. 24 of Massie's book which, while it mentions a comparison group of films of normal children, says nothing about the analysis being carried out blind. Searching the book using the word "blind" takes me to an appendix which indicates that he was at least familiar with the use of blind methodology, yet as far as I can tell, the study mentioned concerns families with better and poorer methods of child-rearing, and was not specifically related to autism. A search of Pubmed of "Massie" and "autism" turns up five papers, only one of which (the 1980 one) appears to be a group research report, and it does not mention the use of a blind procedure. So I think Allen gave in too soon (unusual for him). What would be needed to inspire confidence in Massie's claim is data employing raters blind to whether they were viewing a home movie of a young child later to become autistic, or a normal child. If the blind raters identified significantly more problematic interactions in the videos of the autistic group, that would be persuasive. It would also be persuasive if they examined the home videos using Massie's criteria and predicted with some accuracy which children were later to turn out autistic. Perhaps Joan, who seems to be familiar with Massie's work, could tell us if such data exists, and perhaps send us relevant excerpts. Until then, I'm going to to withhold judgement on the issue. I have to say that aside from the strong genetic findings, which make a powerful case against parental upbringing inducing autism, I find the hypothesis of parental causation difficult to swallow because of its implausibility. One of the striking features of autism is how early it develops, reflected in the first name for the disorder by Kanner ("early infantile autism"). Massie himself appears to believe it can be detected by age two. It would take staggeringly bad parenting to induce autism in a child at so young an age and over so short a period of time. Yet the Massie hypothesis requires only subtle differences in parenting to produce this highly aberrant disorder. On the other hand, we have unfortunately far too many examples of infants severely neglected and psychologically and physically abused. They may or may not turn out well later in life, but I don't recall that anyone has ever established that a major risk for them is that they turn out autistic. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
