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“Our Own Little Worlds”

Photo © Jill at Blue Moonbeam Studio | Flickr / Creative Commons [image: A wooden gate in a botanical garden, with the Austin skyline in the background, as seen reflected in a crystal ball.] Devin S. Turk twitter.com/AuroralAutistic As I have become more involved with the autistic self-advocacy movement, I’ve found myself paying more and more attention to how non-autistic populations talk about us. I have often heard my beautiful, vibrant community described by non-autistics with words like “disease” and “epidemic.” Even if it’s not as blatant, the language our wider society uses to talk about autistic people is reflective of a deep-seated discomfort and even disgust with the non-normative.  One example is the idea that autistic people are in our “own little worlds.” “They’re in their own little world” alludes to the intensely ableist trope of the “mysterious autistic” person, someone who is “trapped” within their “Autism-ridden” body or…

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Conflicts of Interest in Early Autism Intervention Research: A Conversation with Dr. Kristen Bottema-Beutel

Photo courtesy Dr. Bottema-Beutel [image: Formal photo of Dr. Bottema-Beutel, a smiling white woman with medium-length side parted brown hair.] Advocates of early autism interventions often claim such approaches are “evidence based,” whereas critics have long pointed out individual flaws in cited studies. We were glad to learn about Dr. Kristen Bottema-Beutel’s analysis of general conflicts of interest in early autism research, and talk with her about how her findings complicate assertions about being early autism interventions being evidence based, and what else she and her team discovered. —- Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Can you tell us why you decided to pursue this analysis of conflicts of interest (COIs) in early autism intervention research? Bottema-Beutel: The short answer is that I’ve been following Michelle Dawson on Twitter (her handle is @autismcrisis). Michelle is an autistic researcher who has been sounding the alarm on undisclosed COIs for more than a decade—before I…