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siodine comments on How to tell apart science from pseudo-science in a field you don't know ? - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: kilobug 02 September 2012 10:25AM

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Comment author: siodine 02 September 2012 03:58:26PM *  4 points [-]

Seems to me that no therapy is scientifically proved yet, but I would probably bet on something like CBT.

I assume by "scientifically proved" you mean well supported by the available evidence, in which case CBT has already attained that [edit: I don't mean specifically for autism; Villiam_Bur's comment leads me to infer that he's referring to CBT being a potentially useful therapy more generally]. And the reason Freud is so disparaged is because his methodology was at best proto-scientific and at worst speculation, and yet people still take him seriously. For that reason, I speculate the hostility ostensibly directed towards Freud is actually intended for his current supporters.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 02 September 2012 07:52:03PM *  2 points [-]

Actually, I wanted to say that there is no proof that CBT works for autism; but because it was proved to work for other things, I would bet on it anyway. I don't believe it could cure the cause, but I believe it could teach some useful behaviors to somehow compensate for the missing skills.

Comment author: Rhwawn 03 September 2012 12:40:37AM 2 points [-]

Perhaps I'm missing a point here, but when I look in Google Scholar there seems to be enough existing research on CBT & autism to say whether it helped or not.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 03 September 2012 01:42:52PM 2 points [-]

Those articles seem mostly about CBT used to reduce anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behavior at autistic children. Yes, that's an area where CBT is successful, and it's a great news that it works for autists too.

But to me it seems like it does not address the "essence" of autism (not that I know exactly what the essence of autism is), only fixes some symptoms. At the end, if everything succeeds, you will still have an autistic child; some of the problems will be fixed, some of them will remain. Yes, it's worth doing, just don't get your hopes too high.