Selling Out the Spectrum:
How Science Lost the Trust of Autistic People, and How It Can Win It Back
by Liam O’Dell (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
In the particular, this book is about the autistic community and their relationship with research and researchers into autism. Its conceptual scope, or applicability, is much broader, about the question in general of how science and medicine relates, or should relate, to the objects of its research.
The weak point is that it does feel particularly first-book-ish. The writing could be stronger, the organization more elegant, and the themes stated more clearly. But the journalistic qualities are stellar. This is a question that does not have a singular answer, not yet, and maybe not ever. But there are a lot of different ways to think about the question – as science, as public policy, as experience, et cetera – each that get included and considered in their own accord and in constellation.
Possibly the best quality is the author’s grinding his axe gracefully. He clearly has a position, and full disclosure it is not mine, but I never felt opposing positions to be either unfairly or inaccurately represented. He has a particular talent for addressing a hostile interlocutor without rancor but with judgment.
The book is more of a starting point for discussions, again about autism in specific but with themes that are broadly applicable to every human typology, but as that it is excellent, and a comfortable read at that.
My thanks to the author, Liam O’Dell, for writing the book and to the publisher, for making the ARC available to me.
CITATION HEEDED 