"God, what a depressing story the 'scientific' one is..."

I make no apology for bringing some element of 'science' to the roseate glow of pseudoscience permeating some of the claims in this thread - including this one

"Dyslexia is a gift, Emma"
From: Lizzie Cornish 1 Date: 26 Jan 10 - 04:58 PM

nor of quoting some skeptical views of unsubstantiated claims of 'cure' and 'healing' advertised widely in some of the sites like Autism Today.com which seem to exist solely to promote (and sell) the 'autism industry'


To quote Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

"If you're only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything. You become a crotchety misanthrope convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) Since major discoveries at the borderlines of science are rare, experience will tend to confirm your grumpiness. But every now and then a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you're too resolutely and uncompromisingly skeptical, you're going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere skepticism is not enough.

At the same time, science requires the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism, because the vast majority of ideas are simply wrong, and the only way to winnow the wheat from the chaff is by critical experiment and analysis.

If you're open to the point of gullibility and have not a microgram of skeptical sense to you, then you cannot distinguish the promising ideas from the worthless ones.

Uncritically accepting every proffered notion, idea, and hypothesis is tantamount to knowing nothing. Ideas contradict one another; only through skeptical scrutiny can we decide among them. Some ideas really are better than others.

The judicious mix of these two modes of thought is central to the success of science. Good scientists do both."