User talk:Oolong
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Edinburgh International Festival
See discussion for further observations on the topic of whether the links for threeweeks and Fest should be there or not. BAK 09:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Buffalo
Brilliant explanation. Thank you. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
William McGonagall: slightly less awkward phrasing
I did chuckle at your comment on your edit of William McGonagall! -- Jmc (talk) 20:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Autism spectrum article: changes needed
As per Averixus's suggestion under Talk:Autism spectrum#Plan of action, I wanted to start a list of things that need changing on the Autism spectrum page. I'm dealing with a hostile editor threatening to revert any changes I make, so proceeding cautiously here. I will move this list to the main Talk page when it's ready.
"Autistic" redirects here. Not to be confused with Autism.
It doesn't make sense to suggest that people might confuse this with autism. Either 'autism' refers to the exact same thing, or (historically) it refers to a sub-category of ASD.
The autism spectrum is an umbrella term...
This first paragraph should start by explaining what the term means in broad strokes, before introducing the other names it is known by (including 'autism') and explaining what is meant by a 'spectrum' (the existing explanation is unclear, and reads like it may have made a bit more sense before some earlier text was rewritten). As an opening paragraph, this is considerably longer than it should be. There should be a brief account of the previously separate diagnoses that were collapsed into this in DSM-5 and ICD-11, and how the new manuals divide the ASD category, but I think this warrants its own paragraph.
Symptoms can be detected before the age of two
There was a requirement of 'onset prior to age 3 years' for a diagnosis of 'autistic disorder' in DSM-IV, but not for Autism Spectrum Disorders more broadly, and the requirement seems to be entirely absent from DSM-5. The uncited claim that 'experienced practitioners can give a reliable diagnosis' is obviously wrong in many cases.
The causes of autism spectrum conditions remain uncertain
They really, really do, and I don't think it's helpful to have a substantial paragraph on this before we get to the Contents table. This should be fully dealt with in the separate section below; a single sentence in the introductory sentence would be sufficient.
Diagnosis is based on observation of behavior and development
Is this the right place for this? It's quite detailed when it comes to childhood diagnoses, and I'm fairly sure many of those details will vary from country to country, which is not made clear here.
Autistic spectrum disorder is considered a lifelong condition with no simple test or cure
This paragraph relatively solid, although again I'm not sure this level of detail belongs in the opening section. If we're talking about cures, it's probably worth mentioning that as far as the best evidence we have goes, most autistic people don't want one; or, given that this question hasn't been researched as much as it should be, at least that many autistic people have said they wouldn't want to be cured. I don't think the sentence on research that has 'pointed to the reversibility of phenotypes' belongs here; this is a very strong claim, and would require strong evidence.
The reported prevalence of ASD worldwide is variable
This should be dealt with in a section on prevalence, and expand considerably on the fact that 'Apparent increases in the prevalence of ASD have been attributed to changes in reporting practices': there is an important and dangerous misconception that actual prevalence has skyrocketed, and it deserves to be addressed seriously.
Advocacy groups have emerged, some as part of the autism rights movement
A bit odd to mention the autism rights movement (autistic rights movement) but not the huge charities set up by parents, given that the rest of the paragraph is talking at least as much about the big charities. A casual reader might get the very wrong idea that parts of the autistic rights movement promote drug treatment, biogenetic research, behavioural therapy, and 'beliefs about envirotoxins', when these are all things that have been largely opposed (or at least selectively resisted) by autistic-led organisations. I'm amused by how obviously this sentence was written by someone with an axe to grind: "Critics, including those on the spectrum, have bemoaned the entrenchment of some groups' opinions". Also, that Washington Post article is really misleading. Someone ought to take a careful look at the other links too, at some point.
Contents
Six screens down! Still, better late than never.
Classification
On a skim read, this bit looks reasonably solid. Someone's made a valiant effort to condense the latest diagnostic manuals into 2-3 paragraphs each!
We might want to lose 'Further information: Autism § Classification' which starts 'Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD)'. Historical information like that obviously needs to be marked as such, and anyway this is the kind of needless redundancy that makes duplication of pages like this such a chore.
Signs and symptoms
This is obviously written from a 100% medical lens, with little regard for the perspective of autistic people, which I flag up here as something worth thinking about critically. I acknowledge that there are challenges to maintaining NPOV while respecting subjective experiences, and ASD is of course a clinical diagnosis, and in some sense that is our focus here. So I'm not proposing any changes here except for the following:
people with ASD can exhibit notable ability
If we're bringing this up, we ought to talk about 'spiky skills profiles' more broadly, and possibly 'splinter skills'. Depending on what you think counts as a 'notable ability', I'm not sure that only a small percentage of autistic people have them. But then, a lot of people have one or more notable abilities! Especially people with intense interests.
There are two possible developmental courses of ASD
Exactly two? Really? This seems a bold claim. This next one is less tenuous, but it's pre-DSM-5, with much of the data cited being much older still; I'd want to know if it holds up at all since they removed the strict requirement for signs to be evident before the age of 3: 'Most parents report that the onset of autism symptoms occur within the first year of life.'
Regressive autism
There's a paragraph on 'regressive autism' before the section on it starts, presumably missed in the recent merger. We have five paragraphs on this, but they say surprisingly little of real substance. No mention is made of autistic burnout (c.f. Raymaker et al), or other examples of the occasional loss of abilities reported by many autistic adults. No kind of explanation is pointed to at all, really; I know of several proposed mechanisms, but this is obviously not an area that has seen conclusive research. My sense is that this material should be cut down and/or moved out of 'Signs and symptoms' into its own, subsequent section. This is a lot of detail, and we haven't even got to 'social skills' yet.
Social and communication skills
The 'double empathy problem' should be brought in right at the start here; there's plenty of evidence at this point that it's misleading at best to suggest that 'Impairments in social skills present many challenges'. c.f. CJ Crompton, K DeBrabander, B Heasman (2021) and DEM Milton (2012), as well as Crompton et al (2020) and MA Gernsbacher, M Yergeau (2019). In short, the assumption that the social difficulties autistic people experience are the result of deficits in the person is not supported by the available evidence. This section should be rewritten to account for this new evidence and long-standing methodological critique; the current framing is not scientifically supported.
Behavioural characteristics
Many of these are not behavioural characteristics. 'They may develop these difficulties of creating connections due to anxiety or depression' is an interesting suggestion, why not the other way round? Seems simplistic.
I don't think 'abnormal responses to sensations including sights, sounds, touch, taste and smell' stands up as a behavioural characteristic when the sensations themselves, and the way they're processed, are different.
The second core symptom of autism spectrum
Probably best to mention what the first one is supposed to be before getting on to this. This section as a whole could be better structured.
Self-injury
I'm not convinced this belongs under 'signs and symptoms' at all. It's also currently full of inadequately sourced claims, and doesn't explicitly make the obvious links with stimming, with meltdowns, or with distress, aside from chronic pain. In fact, there seems to be no mention of autistic people's distress anywhere in this article, in so many words, which is... interesting. There's only one mention, in passing, of meltdowns. Nothing on shutdowns, catatonia or even inertia, either.
If we're going to have a section on self-injury, can we make sure not portray it as if it's just a thing that happens sometimes when you're autistic? That's harmful. It's important that people at least try to understand the reasons.
Causes of autism
I question the need for four screenfuls on causes when there is also a separate entry on this, and when we could pretty much summarise the state of scientific knowledge of causes as 'it seems to be overwhelmingly genetic, but highly polygenic, and there is ambiguous evidence for a large number of possible environmental factors. It's definitely not vaccines though, this is conclusive.'
Most of the studies on so-called 'risk factors' fail to account for likely confounding factors, notoriously the high likelihood that parents are autistic themselves (but frequently undiagnosed) and being autistic causes environmental factors. As discussed elsewhere, autistic people are far more likely to be unemployed and isolated, for example. There is no point citing any studies on risk factors unless they have carefully accounted for this kind of thing (and preferably been independently replicated).
Pathophysiology
I'm not going to go into this, but I think it could benefit from the attention of someone with a critical eye and limited patience for preliminary findings.
Mirror neurons
I think this one's been directly refuted in the 13 years since the most recent cited study on it. Possibly of interest in a history of science kind of way, but maybe not worth a paragraph here.
As of 2012, there is a consensus
How strong was this consensus? How strong is it now? The citation given doesn't mention a consensus. The abstract says 'We suggest that the social brain, and its dysfunction and recovery, must be understood not in terms of specific structures, but rather in terms of their interaction in large-scale networks'.
Temporal lobe
'It has been argued' ... 'one fMRI study' ...does this warrant a paragraph? There are a lot of other things we could be learning about here. Similarly 'ASD could be linked to mitochondrial disease'... is it, though? If so, how? Is 5% of autistic kids meeting the criteria a lot? If it is, what does that tell us?
Serotonin
Interesting stuff, but still seems to be super speculative. Entry claims '45% of ASD individuals have been found to have increased blood serotonin levels' but study actually states up to 45%. Mulder et al. (2004) suggested 'at least 25%'.
That's it for now.
Hello! (For Neurodiversity Workings in WM-UK)
Great to see you here! Now I, 3Oceans, and m:Wikimedia Korea(WM-KR) are preparing Neurodiversity Editathon(Off/Online Event of editing Wikipedia). I hope the initiative becomes international: so it would be helpful to make the foundation admit they have eliminated Autistics from participating for the sum of the knowledge. Can you encourage workers in Wikimedia UK(WM-UK), to making the initiative to cooperate with Autistic editors / Autistics and wikimedia community in Scotland, England, or Ireland? I think AMASE/ARGH can make this. - Ellif (Talk) 12:59, 14 April 2022 (UTC)