Interview with Uta Frith: we need to rethink the autism spectrum
New podcast out now
Autism has been trending in X/Twitter this week, as Dame Uta Frith gave an interview to the TES in which she questioned whether the autism spectrum was working in the way that it was intended. Uta is an emeritus professor of developmental cognitive psychology at UCL. I first met her in the early 2000s when I was doing my own PhD. She has been working in autism research since the 1960s and has a long term perspective which is unmatched. Despite this, many of those who responded to her interview tried to dismiss her thoughts on the grounds of lack of expertise.
I’ve been feeling for a while that we need to make space for important conversations about autism and neurodiversity that can’t be had on social media. Conversations about anything controversial on social media quickly become (in my experience) personal rather than about the ideas involved. People block each other, or sling insults and try to undermine expertise. It seems that disagreement is experienced as an attack, and this inhibits the development of high-quality ideas and thinking.
One of the most useful things that I learnt at university was that in order to develop your thinking, you have to engage with those who disagree with you. You have to read their books and research studies, listen to interviews with them, and find out why they think what they think. Ideally you need to have direct discussions with them, where they challenge your ideas and you challenge theirs. You need to understand their perspective.
This is in many ways more important that reading the work of those who you agree with, for this will simply confirm your biases. If you don’t actively seek out the work of those who think differently to you, then the quality of your thinking will go downhill. This engagement with differing perspectives isn’t what I see happening on social media.
With that in mind, I’m starting a new podcast with Danielle Drinkwater, another clinical psychologist. It’s called Let’s Talk Neurosense, the Psychology of Neurodiversity, and we plan to invite guests who have many different views on autism and neurodiversity, and who come from a range of perspectives. We don’t invite people because we think they will agree with us, but because we think they have interesting things to say.
We had planned to record a whole first season before releasing any episodes, but we have decided to release our interview with Uta Frith now because we think it adds something to the current conversation.
I hope you enjoy it. If you would like to be a future guest on our podcast, do please get in touch.
Open mindedness and respect for those that disagree seem to have left our culture and are eroding even some scientific thought. In the same vain of learning most when you fail.
Having heard the anger directed at this podcast - I decided to listen for myself. I find myself in a different place than most. Cancel culture is bad especially in science and academic endeavour.. I feel your podcast came from a good place of wishing to speak uncomfortable truths. I was disappointed in the format. Given the nature of public discourse you had/have the opportunity - to make a counter argument. With an academic of more modern nature to be considered now. Of course this is your podcast to do with as you must. In my view though you have a responsibility to interview an adult neuropsychologist in order that both points are heard especially given the contentious nature of this. If you dont know who - may I suggest you approach Dr. Trevor Powell.