A number of myths have been circulating about the provenance of Neurodiversity and my role in it.
Some are positive, some are negative, some are libellous.
Of the positive ones, - I appreciate them. Thank you all! Inevitably some of these myths are inflated and I do try to set the record straight when I come across them... the most common is calling me "Dr Singer". I do not hold a PhD. Need I add that few innovator, since the woman (I'm willing to bet) who invented the wheel, have been motivated by climbing up the greasy pole to academic glory.
Some myths, of course, may arise innocently from misunderstandings or misinformation, which are hardly lacking on the Wild West of social media.
But some of the negative myths - or allegations - to call them by their more contemporary names - appear to be specifically crafted as disinformation by a small coterie of my academic rivals, Chapman, Walker et al, who have not been ashamed to sign off on them despite failing to use their professional research skills to check the facts. For just one example, they might have reasonably guessed that I would possess original documents, which I do, or that my work was submitted in 1998 to a highly regarded academic publisher, and published as a book chapter, now still available at McGraw Hill.
Chapman et al have succeeded in getting a major academic journal to publish a take-down of my work, based primarily on the selective "memories" of a single non-academic source, whose motives can only be guessed at. I am not giving any of these people oxygen. You can find them easily with any search engine. I only ask that you read their allegations with a huge grain of salt, despite their impeccably formatted Academese.
At best, the allegations of these contenders may stem from Confirmation Bias, — a fancy name for "wishful thinking". But for academics and researchers of their calibre, that is no excuse for poor, self‑serving research built on cherry‑picked fake ‘evidence’ drawn from non‑academic social‑media scuttlebutt.
To add insult to injury, these two male* scholars have attempted to cloak their self‑interest by selectively quoting leading feminist scholars — who might well be appalled to find their work appropriated in this way.
Remember Rosalind Franklin ripped off by Watson and Crick? I'm not about to play Rosalind to Walker's and Chapman's allegations.
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* Male judging by their names and appearance. So, what else is new in the history of credit for scholarship? Although Walker seems to change his pronouns to suit the times, at least the last time I looked, he was a "he, him, his".
