On 6/9/2011 11:24 AM, Monica Pignotti wrote:

Maybe it's changed since I encountered the abusive credentialed
quack I mentioned previously. That was before Lovaas renounced the
nastiness (which I did not even know had happened until I read this
article), and I have not followed it much since.

However, at that time, several academic champions of ABA formed an
organization with the harmless-sounding name of the International
Association for the Right to Effective Treatment (IARET), which you
can read about at
http://www.autcom.org/articles/EffectiveTreatment.html if you are
not familiar with it.

"Research" justifying abuse was little more than smoke and mirrors.
When I started reading it, my first thought was of an old Consumer
Reports comment describing the "research" denying the dangers of
tobacco. I felt like I was walking through a hall of mirrors. The
same few "researchers" always referenced the same few articles from
each other. Results were praised and blindly accepted without even
minimal scrutiny of experimental design, never mind any attempts to
replicate. But it met a loose definition of peer-review, so it was
accepted by people who did not understand that the procedures used
by these guys were intended to inflict pain.

Yeah.

John