Science

I am not disputing the fact that there is a ton of misinformation about Autism on TikTok (and the internet as a whole), because there absolutely is and it's dangerous. But it gives me pause that the researcher behind this study developed and promotes a treatment method that is essentially a cousin of ABA. That makes me incredibly skeptical of what his rubric might be for filtering the claims as factual or not.

ABA, for those that don't know, is based on Skinner's operant conditioning and was created by the man who developed "gay conversion therapy." He once said this:

“You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense – they have hair, a nose and a mouth – but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”

If "operant conditioning" makes you think of dog training, you're right. ABA is dog training for Autistic people. It is conversion therapy. It does not "intervene" in their Autism so much as it forces them to appear more neurotypical, and a study from 2018 suggests that it actually creates PTSD symptoms in the patients--that it is traumatic--which is in-line with many firsthand accounts of people that have been through ABA.

So the guy behind this analysis developed his own practice which is rooted in ABA and centers around operant conditioning. I'm sure a lot of what he finds to be false is probably false and not scientifically-supported, but I would def be skeptical of what he considers to be misinformation in some instances since ABA is technically scientifically-supported for autism intervention, due to it's effectiveness in making Autistic people appear more neurotypical (without regard for their psychological wellbeing in many cases).

But with that said, I'm just some schmuck on the internet. I highly recommend reading Autistic people's perspectives on it and seeing what verified smart people have to say.

Here are some pieces I find enlightening:

• https://fortune.com/2022/05/13/autistic-community-reckoning-aba-therapy-rights-autism-insurance-private-equity-ariana-cernius/
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-self-esteem-in-autistic-children/202209/does-applied-behavior-analysis-aba-cause
• https://whyy.org/segments/how-a-therapy-once-seen-as-a-victory-for-autistic-kids-has-come-under-fire-as-abuse/