What IEP should stand for

Yesterday I was reading one of the multiple blog entries by the very prolific blogger Kristina Chew at autism.vox.com. She was talking about her son's IEP and some of the views she and her husband had on their son's IEP and some of the logistical problems they had being busy academic professionals in attending their son's IEP in person. They are among the many parents of autistic children whose tears for toasted snow will most likely not be fulfilled. Many of these parents, including Dr. Chew and her husband insist that ABA be included in their autistic child's IEP-a treatment that promises a coin-flip probability of complete normalcy for the autistic child. Naturally, they present no adult outcomes in the peer reviewed literature, only informally at conferences, where I am unable to look at their results. I emailed Tristram Smith, Ivar Lovaas' heir apparent, asking him if he could email details of these conferences and if they would ever publish a study presenting adult outcomes. I was told that they wanted to publish their adult outcomes but "logistical problems", whatever that means, prevented them from doing so, but he emailed me a power point file about the conference. It turned out the file he emailed me just was a list of tests they gave the research subjects and nothing else. My friend Stephen Shore suggested that I email Dr. Smith and ask him for something more, but I just did not have the inclination to do so.

I still wonder why these logistical problems would prevent them from publishing in the peer reviewed literature in spite of the huge NIMH funding they have received specifically to study adult outcomes in the research subjecs that the wrote about in their 1987 study but not prevent them from making presentations at conferences.

This sort of gave me an inspiration of what IEP should stand for: Idiotic Expectations Program.

The End