Tom Insel lets himself down

Posted in Autism on 30. Dec, 2009

I was saddened to see a recent interview given by Tom Insel to the Age of Autism blog. Maybe he’s not a regular reader of that blog where his fellow scientst Paul Offit is regularly castigated in such personal and violent ways. Or maybe he is and doesn;t care. However the impression I get from Insel is that he’s a weak man who will say whatever it is the person he’s talking to wants to hear.

He certainly did this during his interview with David with statements as bizarre as:

As far as I can tell, the burden of proof is upon anybody who feels that there is NOT a real increase here in the number of kids affected…

In fact the oonly really accurate statement I found during David’s published highlights with Insel was Insel’s statement that:

I think I am arguing, probably, against the wave of the people that are in this field…

which is most definitely the truth. I can’t think of an autism epidemiology expert that has come out and said that there is definitely or definitely not an ‘epidemic’ of autism. And why? Because the science doesn’t exist.

Insel also seems to be infering that most people in the field believe there is one entity called ‘autism’ which is most certainly not true. A simple comparison between Rhett syndrome and all other known forms of autism would clearly show more than one type of autism. Insel doesn;t name names but I am at a loss to think of anyone else in the field who considers autism to be one entity.

He goes on to say that he finds it ‘believable’ that children can develop autism in the context of severe gut problems. Well, good for him. But ‘believable’ is not the same thing as ‘established’ or even ‘hypothetical’. Its one persons opinion.

All in all, this interview added little (if anything) to what we know about autism. But it did allow us to see Tom Insel in a certain light. Not a very good once in my opinion.