Talk:Michelle Dawson

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I am child psychiatrist and psychotherapist (in Italy) with experience in working with people with autism and their families. I read only now Michelle Dawson’s articol, quoted by wikipedia. I want congratulate with her and agree with most of herr writings. Particularly where she puts the question of parents, i.e. family enviroment, that became a taboo, forbidden to speak about, because of the movement against Bettelheim. Working with families and children with all kinds of behaviour ang development difficulties, we see that family disfunctioning (that is not a blame, a sin, because noone of us is perfect, not even as a parent) may product suffering and disorders in all members, and of course in growing children. When family can be helped to change some disfunctioning aspect of their organization and relationships, we often see things go better. I saw that often also with families with an autistic child. All parents may have problems towars a child (not all sons, maybe only one). Often the mothers are more entangled in that, often because fathers are absent or faraway: they may be entangled in labirinths with their son (do you remember Munchausen by proxy?). Family and relations with parents are most important for all people. Also for autistic children. Often we see disfunctions in theyr relationships and family organization. We have not to avoid to adress this topic, in order to help they going on, not in order to blame them

[edit] Reversions and ABA

Before we get into edit wars - even if the time between revisions is great - I feel that the web link which was removed does give valuable information to parents and friends of sufferers. I see no harm in keeping it, some good in keeping it, so I would like to know in some more detail why you feel it is necessary to remove it. I would like to see what User:Species8471 has to say about this - I see you have contributed regularly to topics on autism so I do assume good faith and am genuinely curious - WP:AGF. I am also a doctor, but not specialised in autism. docboat 09:59, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This article - a biography - is about Michelle Dawson and the .info link gives no information relevant to her or this article. Information about autism is sufficiently available through wiki-linked articles.--Fenke 11:43, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of this, Fenke. I left that ridiculous link up way too long because I haven't had time to post a full explanation of why I find it inappropriate, and I didn't want to get into a revert war. But as you pointed out, the fact that it is not directly relevant to the subject of the article is reason enough.
Perhaps I should briefly answer user BrianWalker's question about why the link is so objectionable. Frankly, I find his comments thoroughly misguided and even a bit offensive in and of themselves. I'm trying to imagine how he and whoever placed this link here in the first place could have acted in good faith, but it's difficult considering how tragically misplaced the link is:
  1. As already noted this is a biography of a scientist and autism rights activist. That doesn't mean that anything autism-related belongs in her biography. User BrianWalker may believe the link provides "valuable information" about behavioral interventions (I strongly disagree but he's entitled to his opinion.) However, it provides no information about Michelle, who is the subject of this article, so it doesn't belong here, period.
  2. This particular link is one of the worst I've ever seen. I don't agree that it provides "valuable information" and I suspect it was self-published by someone with no expertise and little understanding of autism. I don't think it meets the Wikipedia definition of a reliable source.
  3. Don't you think it's a bit ironic to put a link to a horrible site that no purpose but to advertise behaviorist techniques for "treating autism" in a biography of someone who's known primarily for her scientific and ethical objections to those techniques?
When you look at it that way, it's hard to assume good faith. Either the person who put the link here knows absolutely nothing about the subject of the article (in which case what did he think he was doing?), or he was deliberately trying to subvert Michelle's cause in the most offensive manner possible by adding a link to a web page created by her ideological opposites to her own biography. I assume we're not required to assume good faith on everyone's part regardless of any countervailing evidence, and this case really strains credibility. At any rate, I hope I never have to delete this sort of garbage again. Species8471 20:12, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I added a link to a facsimile of the Ottawa Citizen article. The title is "Autism reconsidered", not "Autism", even if that is the title of the online version (OCR error?). Makes more sense too. How should it be listed in References? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.42.176 (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)