Busy day observing Ian at school and catching up with e-mail. Just spreading love right now.
Most treatments for autism are not based on scientific evidence, but still have some impact because of the Hawthorne effect.
I've been moonlighting at another blog. Please check out Everyday Politics.
Love this house built around a tree.
Apt. 11d 
Spiesel’s criteria rubbed me the wrong way — she’s right that a critical test of whether an autism treatment is a “cure” is whether it can alter brain physiology in a way that changes underlying brain mechanisms. But, the goal of a lot of behavioral treatment is coping, not a cure. In that case, a “Hawthorne” effect for interventions might mean that one just needs to cycle through multiple interventions, benefiting from the novelty value of each (to both the child and the treatment provider). It does mean that we shouldn’t get attached to any particular treatment.
Incidentally, the placebo effect has a physiological mechanism (that is, if you convince me that something will make me feel better, you may actually relieve pain, improve mood, or, even more surprisingly, influence tremor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease). The problem is that the root effect of all of them is the delusion that the intervention is going to make you feel better, not the intervention itself, and the value wears off as the delusion dies.
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Everyday Politics is great, Laura. If you still have it going come next fall, I’m going to assign readings from it to my American Government class.
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Thanks, Russell. Actually, that blog is a case study on how not to blog. The content is actually very good — good writing, interesting analysis, not screamingly ideological. But it has very few readers. There’s more to blogging that just posting good content. You can’t blog with the idea “if I build it, they will come.”
It doesn’t have a blogroll. We’re not networking with others. We aren’t sure if our audience is only Norton book adopters or the full blogosphere. Maybe the non-partisan angle of the blog bores people too much.
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There’s more to blogging that just posting good content.
You’re right…there’s length!
In all seriousness, do you regret that? You’re a very good blogger; is it, perhaps, a little frustrating to be part of an online project that isn’t networking, blogrolling, etc.? Maybe it would be helpful to think of it more as an e-magazine, with periodic new entries.
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