Comments on: Andrew Solomon on Autism

by: Jay Verkuilen

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:29:06 +0000

I’m now a psychometrics prof at but spent a long, long time as a grad student—in two fields—at University of Illinois. I had different mentors over time. My first (who shall remain nameless) was incredibly critical, far more than is good for anyone. I had to unlearn that because it literally poisoned my thinking as I got way too good at turning the guns on myself. My later mentors were much better about being even handed and modest. Look for what’s good, what you yourself can learn from, and what can be improved. Don’t automatically reach for the 12 gauge and start blasting away. In fact, in the unlikely event that they’re reading I’ll thank, in alphabetical order, Carolyn Anderson, David Budescu, Larry Hubert, Jack Knott, Jim Kuklinski, Gerry Munck and Michael Smithson, various senior faculty members with whom I worked, was supervised by or just got a lot of advice from when a grad student, all of whom taught me how to do it right. The remaining faults are, of course my own.

by: seth

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:44:42 +0000

Aaron, it’s good to hear about that. About a dozen people have told me they were trained “to think critically” — that is, to find flaws. You’re the first person to say they were trained to find strengths.

by: Aaron Blaisdell

Tue, 27 May 2008 23:20:59 +0000

Seth, you wrote “It reminds me of my complaint about how graduate students are trained (or rather not trained): they never learn to praise, to see what’s good about this or that study, so their natural inclination to be negative does a lot of damage.”

We all have our own experiences as graduate students (those of us who are or were) and some of this set later on become mentors. I must say that my experiences differ markedly from yours. My own graduate and postdoctoral mentors (Ralph Miller and Bob Cook, respectively) both taught me how to praise as well as criticize. I have attempted to emulate both sides of critical analysis when mentoring my own postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students.

by: Kristen's Raw

Tue, 27 May 2008 09:08:42 +0000

Interesting about autism and the “sides.”

On a separate note, I love Brian Wansink’s book.

by: Mary (MPJ)

Tue, 27 May 2008 07:50:20 +0000

I read the article too and thought it was a good overview. I’m the mother of an autistic son and fall in with the neurodiversity movement. Not all parents believe that vaccines cause autism (I don’t) or believe that the same things will help their children. I agree most with Phil Schwarz, who commented on the article, that we’re looking at a false dichotomy when we talk about cure/no cure.

Of course, as with autism itself, there is a spectrum of opinion, even if in what appears to be two clear warring factions.