Re: Research on Asperger's Disorder - A little background on Jimmie Gilliam's Claim to Fame

[Guest guest]

A comment on the Gilliam Scale. Gilliam "created" his scale as a not-well-disguised rip off of the Attwood-Garnett Australian Scale. I know a bit about it, because he contacted me in the early days of his scale's development. Tony developed his scale with an Australian clinical colleague in 1995, and published it in his first book, which remains a runaway best seller even now, 15 years after publication in 1997 in the UK, and 1998 in the US. Gilliam was capitalizing on the known phenomenon followed by professionals in mental health and public education: If something perfectly valid is first widely published in popularly written form -- in the vernacular common language rather than professionaleze -- it is not accorded "weight" in the profession. You have to "do it separately" and have it make its splash with the research, clinical, and acadmic community. Then and only then does your product have gravitas.Never mind that Attwood's scale was the ONLY one developed for children that caught on very early because it made sense and was easy to administer, although there were minor versions of an abbreviated "quickie scale" earlier developed by educational testers to tease out "educational autism" as differentiated in American public special education. A good example of such a scale is the Krug/Arick/Almond Autism Behavior Scale (first introduced in 1978, "just as" Asperger Syndrome was getting some early mention in professional literature primarily influenced by British researchers, among whom Lorna Wing was the earliest to consider looking at higher functioning forms of Autism). I happen to know something about the Krug/Arick/Almond scale, because I bought my first Portland home from Pat Almond, who had oodles and oodles of out of date "tests and pamphlets on autism to sell" abandoned in the basement and closets of the house she sold me. Dave Krug and Arick were teaching at Portland State University -- with briefly being the head of the special education program at PSU's school of education before he and his wife went for bigger money and notoriety by being the "autism experts" for the Beaverton School district (a relatively well-to-do Portland suburb. Arick's wife continued to capitalize on her husband's name and local fame to dominate the autism program in Beaverton while went all over the country peddling the scale, a nice money-maker. Pat Almond got herself a nice job at Oregon's Department of Education working in a tiny division that specialized in guess what? Educational testing and "learner classification." When I entered the fiel with my own interests, Dave Krug was nearing early retirement from PSU -- which seemed a bit strange for a professor so apparently young, but he was getting tired of the academic rat race and the autism industry. So, I know a little about how the autism industry developed its industrial strength by sucking on the never-dry teat of federal and state educational bureaucracies, with an institutionalized level of revolving door employment, appointment, and contracts for consultation featuring huge, built-in conflicts of interest and self-dealing. After his retirement, Dave went on to formalize a separate scale he was fiddling around just for AS, but because he had chosen to sideline his own career by retiring early, what he finally developed never caught on. You have to be in the middle of the river in that canoe race to be identified as a contender, and he had chosen to paddle along the banks and leisurely in the sloughs. Nice for recreation. No good for the moolah department.

Fast forward to Tony's scale, developed over a three year period in the early 1990's. For the first time, you have a quick and very valid way of identifying "what's wrong" if not only what's different with children, especially when parents and educators could not longer ignore something really "wrong" with kids whose behavior wasn't as much a mystery as it was an impediment to inclusive education. Tony and developed their interest in furtherance of Tony's never-ending curiosity about AS, sparked by his having studied with Lorna Wing in the UK for his doctoral work, and a brief and failed stint in New Zealand before he and settled in a suburb of Brisbane, a much happier place for him not to do research but to write his first book on AS and become the ny Appleseed of this newly "official" disability. He was aware of the early ICD-9 pre-publication hurry-burry, and also was aware, through his UK and Canadian connections, of the interest of the American Psychiatric Association's development of its definition of AS for the forthcoming DSM IV, published a couple of years later than the ICD. Finally, Tony was more carefully alligned in knowing what seemed to be "spot on" in characterizing what distinguishes AS (subjectively, at least, and from the "art rather than science" point of view of many diagnosticians) from other forms of intellectual impairments not only in children but in adults by showing a clear preference for the AS scale that and Carina Gillberg developed as early as 1989 during the early stages of the protracted pre-publication editorial development and international validation testing period for the DSM IV. Incidentally, it's no accident that the ONLY fully validated diagnostic instrument, as opposed to a predictive scale, for autism spectrum disorder is the Diagnostic Interview of Social Communication, whose criteria more closely fit Gillberg and Gillberg, and closely follow Asperger's original descriptive definitions of what came to be known as Asperger Syndrome -- so named by Lorna Wing.

[My, how intellectually incestuous this all seem to be!]Once the range of autism began to be popularly tossed about, other "scales" came out of the woodwork, and without exception, the earliest scales published in the professional literature focused on children. With them, after all, is where the medical insurance and public special education money was and still is. It's interesting to look at adults, but you gotta be able to buy your Rice Crispies and gain recognition from your research and academic peers, so, TA DAH, we get diagnostic scales such as the ADOS and the Gillberg and Gillberg scale (used primarily in Europe and other countries that use the ICD-9 and 10 World Health Organization's demographic figure definitional criteria for autism as a reportable disabling condition. So, Jimmie Gilliam also jumped on the bandwagon. Figuring that Attwood's popularity was just a fad -- and besides the guy was an Ozzie --Gilliam figured he'd rip Attwood/Garnett off, and since Tony and his colleague are good folks, they wouldn't mind an almost virtual clone of the Garnett-Attwood scale being used in the US, which is where Gilliam has made his money. Tony and really haven't been openly critical of Gilliam. They are both more into spreading the word and treatment than they are in cornering the market with their scale and cleaning up that way. And they really haven't. That's because Tony isn't into the money, nor, for the most part, into the kind of recognition craved by researchers who have little going for themselves other than the fame and fortune involved in developing neat, popular, easy-to-administer behavioral and diagnostic scales, many of which are quite unscientific, but chosen for use by poorly educated, "Gimmie the easy one! " educators looking for excuses to intellectually if not literally pigeonhole troublesome students. So, about 12 years ago, Gilliam does his little magic trick, gets recognition and a copyright, and sallies forth on the big bucks trail to rake in oodles of money.

Now something interesting. Sometimes fame DOES go to one's head, or lots of the heads of one's colleagues. Once the DSM 5 starts being written, guess who jumps on the bandwagon early to adopt a diagnostic scale for adults that just happens to mirror most if not all of the anticipated definitional criteria for ASD? Gilliam, for one. Kate Lord for another. And the co-authors of the RAADS-R, the Ritvo Autism/Asperger Diagnostic Scale - Revised, but some of you might remember what I've said in earlier postings about the eery similarity in some of its questions' language and the wording of an adult function and behavioral scale I started to "push" to professionals as early as 2000. Nuff said about that. No prob. That's "the business." And I ain't circulating in the same rarified circles, anyway, but I do follow the horseracing and the test-track runs.Yep. Besides, I'm having too much fun kicking sand on the sidelines.If as a parent you feel its worthwhile to support such thinly-disguised interest by a lazy researcher whom no one other than intellectually lazy educators turn to for cheap fixes to continue to cash in in the autism industry and the sequestration of autistic kiddos, why yes, just go ahead and play the game. That is, if you believe the DSM V definition and the ugly, small-minded politics of the APA and the special education industry is worth your time. My 'Nuff said' -- again. N. Meyer Research on Asperger's Disorder > >Greetings: > >Just passing this on as requested. > >Best. > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >Dear , > >Please inform your members that I am conducting research on children who have Asperger's Disorder or High Functioning Autism. The research involves completing a survey on the characteristics of children who have this disorder. I will pay people who participate in this research. For additional information, go to: http://www.jamesegilliam.net. Then click on the link "Asperger's Research." > >To go directly to the survey, click on the following link: >http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/944070/Gilliam-Asperger-s-Disorder-Scale-2 > > E. Gilliam, Ph.D. > >Author of the Gilliam Asperger's Disorder Scale and the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale > > > > >------------------------------------ > > "We each have our own way of living in the world, together we are like a symphony. >Some are the melody, some are the rhythm, some are the harmony >It all blends together, we are like a symphony, and each part is crucial. >We all contribute to the song of life." > ...Sondra > > We might not always agree; but TOGETHER we will make a difference. > > ASPIRES is a closed, confidential, moderated list. >Responsibility for posts to ASPIRES lies entirely with the original author. > Do NOT post mail off-list without the author's permission. > When in doubt, please refer to our list rules at: > http://www.aspires-relationships.com/info_rules.htm > ASPIRES ~ Climbing the mountain TOGETHER > http://www.aspires-relationships.com >