Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Yuval Levental's piece on neurodiversity published in scientific american

For the past few years or so, the neurodiversity movement has dominated the mainstream media in getting their ideas across with minimal exposure for opposing viewpoints.  I've managed to get  in a couple of shots.  Newsweek ran a profile about me.  However the headline "The Hater's Guide to Self-hating" appeared in their print issue.  The conservative Spectator Magazine in the UK also published a piece I wrote criticizing ND.

Recently,  the magazine Scientific American published a  pro-neurodiversity piece by disabilities rights advocate Aiyana Bailin.  She claimed there were misconceptions about neurodiversity.

Thomas Clements, one of the people from our side, questioned on twitter whether or not Scientific American could publish a rebuttal piece.

I decided to approach Scientific American to ask them about publishing a piece that I would write, giving the other side of the neurodiversity story.  They wrote me back stating they usually just published things by credentialed scientists, but I could submit something to their opinions editor and gave me the email contact.  This discouraged me, as I thought the power of ND was allowing Bailin, not a credentialed scientist to do something unprecedented.  I decided to take a pass on writing and submitting the op ed piece. 

I told Yuval Levental, another person from our side, about this on twitter.  He said he'd like to write the piece I declined to write and I gave him the contact info of the people he could reach at Sci American.

I'm happy to report They published Yuval's piece. This is another rare victory for our side and I hope we can continue gaining some success in our uphill battle against the ND movement. An old cliche, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a few steps.