Revealed: Who "Really" Coined "Neurodiversity"? An evidence based corrective

Blume? Singer?

or...

Turtles All The Way Down?

An Actual Correction of a Scurrilous Libel

(based on actual original documents!)

  Spoiler: It was me!

I refer to the scurrilous, erroneous and self-serving trashtake of my work by the two most prominent Northern Hemisphere academic Johnny-Come-Latelies to the #Neurodiversity discourse, Robert J Chapman, Nick Walker, and their 4 acolytes. They promote their confabulations as :

An "overdue correction" on the origins of neurodiversity theory".

         (Scare quotes mine. It's actually a "premature ..."... oh, never mind...)

How did this seemingly envious crew manage to get their mishmash of wishfulthinking and confirmation-bias past the - so far nameless -  purportedly "expert" fact-checkers of the highly esteemed Sage Journals: Autism? 

Alas, when I complained to the publishers that they had been misled, I had a visitation from the mighty Sage Corp's inhouse team of Legal Beagles who retorted with what appeared to be a threatening letter. But who am I to know what a threatening letter from lawyers looks like? I have never had one before.  But

 Dammit, Sage Journals have spawned a whole new industry
 based on my original work! 

Soooo not nice of them!

Meanwhile, thanks to Sage's gullibility, my brief holiday from living below the poverty line is over. But don't cry for me, America, UK, wherever...  Fortunately I live in Australia, which has a relatively more human welfare system than what goes down in the US and UK.  Thus, I live in secure, albeit neglected, Public Housing and receive the Age Pension.  So at least I can't end up on the streets living in a cardboard box on a diet of tinned baked beans. 

You can see the Sage 6's poorly researched allegations and my factual rebuttal on Dropbox in "blow by blow" tabular format. 

• Dropbox: Rebuttal of Sage Publication claims in annotated and commented essay
• Dropbox: Detailed paragraph by paragraph rebuttal in tabular form
  Stop Press: Oops! Sorry! you can't access my Dropbox because I can't even afford to pay the subscription fee. Since Sage published the calumnies of these contenders, I appear to have been cancelled, and people seem afraid to hire me. I am looking into Google Docs which appears to be free, and has better tools. 

So this new generation of upwardly mobile scholars and academics identify themselves as a group of “6 International Scholars of Neurodiversity”. 

"International"? Quite an over-reach for a mob of Brits and Yanks. But what can we expect of the relics of the former British Empire? It seems they haven't got used to the fact that the days of empire are over. 

As a Southern Hemisphere scholar I'd like to issue the first of my own correctives: this crew may more accurately be described by a more nuanced subtitle: one which references what used to be known as "Northern Hemisphere Cultural Imperialism". But I couldn't think of a suitable acronym for 

 "6 Unreconstructed Northern Anglo-Colonialist Pretenders to The Neurodiversity Crown"

So for brevity I will refer to this crew as "The Sage 6".  Though you may soon conclude that they have shown anything but "sagacity".

Given the error-laden claptrap this collective have dished up, any academic worth their salt might deduce that the Sage 6 are singularly devoid of the most basic research skills let alone ethics. And even logic, as I will outline below. But for the grandfather of all absurdities, see  down below, "The Final Absurdity" that got past Sage's esteemed editors".

The gang of 6 are: 

• Dr Robert J Chapman, the Young Pretender to the neurodiversity crown,  
  Hey Robert, be my guest! Take it if you want it that badly, for you will find that "heavy is the head that wears the crown".
  
  
• the Not So Young (despite his very fetching avatar ... depicted below) American author Nick Walker.  PS. I don't do pronouns on command. If someone does not respect me, why should I respect their demands?
   
• ... and their 4 acolytes

What might have motivated the Sage 6?

Their beatup is rumoured to be motivated by a "Revenge of the Trans" vendetta, but who am I to say? 

You may ask what my "crime" was to invite such vicious payback. You can see the answer here. 

Sage Publications Inc.'s Defence

According to Sage's publishers, their purported fact-checkers are "people with expertise in the matter". 

I'm still waiting to find out who these so-called "experts" are. Whoever they are, Sage's highly experienced editors might surely have had the nous to realise that these people might not have access to my original documents and correspondence. Which they absolutely do not!

And to add insult to injury, Sage have sooled their dedicated in-house legal team onto me, who have sent me some (very deniably) threatening letters. Although who am I to decide what feels threatening to me in the face of Sage's learned legal counsel?

As I already explained, I cannot afford a legal team to go up against a publishing juggernaut like the mighty multinational corporation Sage Publications Inc. 

My correction of an actual Disrepresentation

I begin on a far from trivial correction,: 

The Sage 6 are hardly “International” scholars. 

American + British does not = “Internationality”.
It adds up to North-Centrism aka
Northern Hemisphere Cultural Hegemony

The 6 contenders rely heavily on two shaky platforms:

1. The, dare I say, resentful so-called “evidence” of a non-scholar, Martijn Dekker, whose ignorance of academic process in the social sciences should be glaringly obvious to any academic. But somehow the Sage 6 fell for it anyway. For Dekker's information, every academic thesis undergoes a comprehensive ethics review before acceptance. From this, it can be deduced that my thesis was checked and accepted.  I have rebutted Dekker’s absurd confirmation-biased confabulations here. Not only are they libelling me, but they are libelling my university. 
2. A lot of freewheeling assumptions about the role of American freelance journalist Harvey Blume in the development of the term Neurodiversity.  All of which can be traced back to the work of Wikipedia’s amateur “editors”. 

Spoiler: I have 100s of pages of correspondence with Blume and we only talked about Neurodiversity a few times (shown below). Believe it or not, we had other matters that interested us more than petty academic rivalries*.

* To make it absolutely clear, our relationship was collegial not romantic 

To underscore: I am not an academic. I chose not to be. Like anything in life, academia has its strengths and weaknesses. I found it both inspiring and suffocating. The senior academics at my university certainly did not "get" that I was actually creating a new paradigm in disability studies (sorry, Nick Walker, in 1998, mate) which at that time was only understood within the limited categories of: either  Physical, Intellectual or the dilly bag of everything else  "Mental Illness" to which autistics were consigned. It's understandable that at the time, my supervisors did not "get" that I had developed a new paradigm. Neither did it occur to me. But career academics are very discomfited by paradigm shifts, for obvious reasons. And so, to Wikipedia... 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wikipedia is not an academic resource

While we can blame Wikipedia and its amateurs, so much more culpable are any lazy academics who venture to use Wikipedia as a research authority or even as a research gateway.

I would hope the 6 academics have not been relying on Wikipedia's nameless and self-appointed northern "editors" given their dubious qualifications. And that's assuming these individuals even have any. Wikipedia’s scandal-loving amateurs have been playing around with my entries for going on 3 decades now. I long ago gave up trying to set the record straight with them. 

I notice the Sage 6's pejorative allegations have even been inserted into the item on Neurodiversity, and most disgustingly into my actual biography. And they or their agents have even inserted themselves.  I have registered a complaint with Wikipedia, but it seems the good ship Wikipedia is deserted... 

Sexism too?

I cannot help wondering if it is completely beyond Wikipedia's amateur so-called "editors" to imagine that someone who is neither American nor Male can nevertheless be capable of coming up with a "Big Idea" all by ourselves!

Reflexivity

Click to enlarge if not familiar
with the term 

BTW, academics working in the social sciences are required to practice reflexivity and question their own motives. I commend this practice to the Sage 6. 

As a non-academic blogger, Dekker is of course free to throw self-reflection to the winds and write whatever fantasies he dreams up. But academics are liable if they take amateurs on trust because. 

Harvey Blume

If the authors had shown even a modicum of common sense, they might have made some pertinent enquiries. They might have found out that I corresponded with Harvey Blume for many years from 1997 onwards. Indeed I believe I shared this information years ago with Chapman. I need tech support to get back into my archives, but I can't afford it, as I already explained. 

I have retained my correspondence with Blume, which shows, unsurprisingly, that he was a jobbing journo and knew nothing about disability politics or the Social Model of Disability until I educated him to the extent that he was remotely interested. He learned the term "neurodiversity" from me. He wrote about it once or twice and moved on, never to return. He did not cite me, nor, as a generalist op-ed writer in mass media was he required to do so. 

My rivals have even turned Blume's ommission into another scourge to beat me with. It did not bother me in the least at the time. Because, who knew that 20 years later, the Neurodiversity banner would actually go viral?

Sleuths, private eyes, legal eagles are welcome to peruse these documents, even carbon-date them if they want, but I'm damned if I'm going to go to the expense of paying for carbon-dating myself because of this scoundrelly crew.  

Transcript of correspondence with Blume in which I mention Neurodiversity
 prior to his being "the first to publish   

. 

Note: I used the term Neurodiversity freely witih Harvey because I had already talked to him about it on the phone.

Where I said ''that I'm sure I coined Neurodiversity'' I also implied that the concept but not the coinage was probably ''in the air'' aka "the zeitgeist". I said the same thing in my thesis. 

The article with the "Tentative Title" was eventually published as a book chapter by the then Open University Press, now owned by McGraw Hill. Available at https://search.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

In case it has escaped my learned rivals, ALL paradigm shifting ideas arise from the zeitgeist (Eng: the spirit of the time/era), ie the human discourse of the given time)  but it takes a theorist to name, explicate and analyse them first. They don't come down in a bolt of lightening from the blue. 

Next, may we expect Nick Walker to abandon his claim to the phrase "Neurodiversity Paradigm"? Because not only was it "in the air", but it was based on my coinage. They even drag Kassiane Asasumasu into it, despite the fact that she derived her idea from my coinage as well. Does anyone know if Asasumasu even cited me?  

It seems to surprise my career academic rivals that I did not make a song and dance about my neologism: Absurdly, Chapman seizes on, as evidence that I "did not coin neurodiversity", because I failed to proclaim it it with blazing trumpets.

"Singer did not claim to have coined the term of neurodiversity herself"

  Chapman et al, Sage Journals: Autism,  March 12, 2023       

Unlike my career academic competitors,  I was not all agog for academic glory and fame.  I was simply writing from my heart about my "lived experience". This absurdity says more Chapman's ambitious ego than mine

You may ask: then why did I go back to university at all? 

Because I was a sole parent of a toddler who needed a lot more care than most. Who knew we autism in the family way back then? No-one, not even the pscho-medical professions knew the extent of the autistic spectrum. Thus I was not able to work regular hours, not least because most of the money I earned would have been seized by Australia's punitive welfare system anyway. I was just one of many, mostly females of course, caught in a (well-documented here) poverty trap by government fiat.  Thanks to the pandering idiots of our major parties, the effect was to create a HUGE disincentive to work and employment. 

But enrolling at university meant that I got an extra $AUD 30 a fortnight supplement to the carers pension.  Believe me, it mattered! And it was something meaningful to do. 

My Academic Majors

When people asked me what I "majored" in, I joked - though it was no joke - that I majored in anything scheduled on Wednesdays, because that was the only day my father had free to babysit my child. I could not afford childcare on top of rent. 

The Jane Meyerding accusation

I hope the 6 Sages will not continue to seize on a conversation I had with Jane Meyerding when I asked her if she had ever heard the term "Neurodiversity". It is important to note that Jane is in no way to blame for our conversation being wilfully misinterpreted by these dirt-digging desperados. I consulted her because she had been in the USA mainstream of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement long before me.  And because I had no intention of using the coinage until I was absolutely sure that the word did not exist. By then,  I had already exhausted all the resources of university libraries, the internet and never found a single mention. As a further note, my supervisors would have demanded a citation of the word, if they had any doubt that it was not my original coinage. 

Jane confirmed she had never come across it either, which left me free to use and interpret it in my thesis.

Notice that my defamers interpreted my correspondence with Jane in a twisted and mean-spirited way. Perhaps it is because they imagine I think the same way as they do?  Can we deduce that they do not feel the need to check in with others before they make their self-promoting claims?. 

Blume

It is frankly galling to find Harvey Blume getting equal billing with me in the history of the movement, when he was simply a freelance journalist specialising in interviewing literary figures.  

Blume mentioned "neurodiversity" once, having picked my brain about disability politics, and then moved on to chase other rabbits.  Meanwhile, the development of this concept was my life's work, born out of great family hardship and struggle and my fortuitous discovery of Disability Studies. And it was NOT written just for the sake of personal catharsis, but also because I didn't want other families affected by Autism to have to endure the same. By that time, I had already founded the first of about 8 local and international autism support groups

Nor do journalistic ethics or the laws of defamation appear to daunt the Wikipedia crew,  whose hogwash has been lapped up by my academic rivals. Hardly surprising, since they well know that defamation cases can only be afforded by corporations or billionaires. Which brings me to...

Any billionaires interested in funding my defamation case? 
Don't let me dissuade you. Remember I have original papers. How could we possibly lose?

The Final Absurdity in the Neurodiversity Saga

How could this example of Botha, Chapman, Walker et al's blundering "logic" possibly have got past the learned editors of Sage Publications? 

Having made up their minds, for reasons we can only guess at, that the term Neurodiversity could only be attributed to anyone else but me, the 6 academicians put their heads together to gather the killer evidence. 

Yet despite their advanced research skills, however desperately hard they tried, they simply could not find a shred of evidence anywhere of prior usage.Just as I couldn't when I exhaustively researched my thesis in 1998 (as accredited by the Sydney University of Technology's Ethics Committee).  And BTW, by defaming me, they Sage 6 are actually defaming my University.  About which more later. 

So they came up with this absurdity :

"Unless further archival evidence comes to light, it is possible we will never     know who coined the term neurodiversity"  

(Botha, Chapman, Walker et al)    

 

All I can say in reply to this absurdity is that if it wasn't me,

then it could only have been coined by  

    'Turtles all the Way Down'

 

   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

But now, I leave you with a time-honoured lesson
from our Ancient Sages

     Albeit note the time-dishonoured sexism I have been forced to correct. 

_______________________________________________________

Dramatis Personae

Do any psychologists out there have any ideas about what this reveals?

_______________________________________________________

Bibliography

The Provenance of the Neurodiversity Concept

Judy Singer

*Thesis

Singer, J. (1998).  Odd People In: The Birth of Community Amongst People on the “Autistic Spectrum”: a personal exploration of a New Social Movement based on Neurological Diversity. A thesis presented to the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Social Science (Honours), Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney, 1998. Submitted September 1998.

Book

Singer, J. (2016) NeuroDiversity: The birth of an idea. Kindle https://www.amazon.com/NeuroDiversity-Birth-Idea-Judy-Singer-ebook/dp/B01HY0QTEE/

Book Chapters

Singer, J. (1999). Why can't you be normal for once in your life?: From a 'Problem with No Name' to a new category of disability. In Corker, M. and French, S. (Eds.). Disability Discourse Open University Press UK https://www.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

Singer, J. (2002). When Cassandra was very very young. In Rodman, K. (Ed.) (2002) Is anybody listening? Jessica Kingsley Publishers, UK

Singer, J. (2003). Preface: Travels in Parallel Space: An Invitation. In Miller, J. K. (ed). Women from Another Planet? Our Lives in the Universe of Autism 1stBooks Library, New York

Singer, J. (2019) Reflections on the Neurodiversity Movement 20 years on. In Neurodiversity: 20th anniversary of the birth of the concept: Advocacy for positive recognition of human diversity and its future available https://www.etsy.com/ca-fr/listing/701221413/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Translation available at La Neurodiversité - 20e anniversaire de la naissance d'un concept: Plaidoyer pour la reconnaissance positive de la diversité humaine et pour son avenir https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/688599087/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Government Publication

Singer, J. (2000).  Disability Employment Services Information Kit.  Department of Family and Community Services, Australian Government publication (Comprises 8 illustrated booklets, half in Easy English and half in Pictorial English, fact sheets and posters. 50,000 copies in print, distributed to every Disability Employment Service office in Australia)

Academic papers

Singer, J. (1999). No Longer Fair Game: Human Rights for Nerds, Weirdoes and Oddballs: The current situation of people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders in the NSW education system. A paper given at the 1999 Conference on Human Rights, Disability, and Education at the University of NSW.

Singer, J. (1999). Uncovering the Neurological Procrustean Bed. A paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network". University of Technology, Sydney

Singer, J. (1999). Voice and “Neurological Difference”.   A seminar paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network"  UTS

Satirical Pieces

Singer, J. (1998) NT Social Skills Deficiencies: A case study available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical  https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/

Singer, J. (1998) What to do if you suspect your child has NT available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical  https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/ 

Debut Appearance of the Word “Neurodiversity”

Singer, J  (1997)  Mentioned by Judy Singer in private email to Harvey Blume. Correspondence archived, pictured above. 

Blume, H (1998)  On the Neurological Underpinnings of Geekdom The Atlantic Monthly: September 1998

Blog

Reflections on Neurodiversity:  Afterthoughts, Ideas, Polemics. Not always serious

What is Neurodiversity? Definitions and discussion.

I am not Transphobic.. Just Chapmanphobic, Walkerphobic and

 ... and  phobic about a Yankee gutter tabloid journalist, but who cares about him? Not giving him oxygen. And I only respect the pronoun choices of people who respect me, not those who seize the opportunity to clamber over me up the greasy pole to academic glory. NB, I am not an and academic, had no desire to be. 

What do you make of Walker, a man with a shaved head which clearly proclaims his sex, who then demands to penetrate the ranks of womanhood and dictate his "pronouns" at us.  And who then tries to destroy the reputation of the actual woman who pioneered his field? (For those who don't know, that is verifiably me, in a 1998 academic thesis). 

Any psychologists care to comment?

Sure, Walker did an impressive job of unpacking the density of meaning coiled within my coinage of Neurodiversity. And I have huge respect. Incidently, his accuracy proves that the concept was lurking in the Platonic realm with a specific meaning, waiting to be constellated by the right person in the right time in the right place. Why was that me? Because I was at the very intersectional node to channel it. This is not being "mystical". I just happened to be there. It was a Jonah and the Whale situation, and absolutely not a pleasure. But I can only guess that it must have been painful for Walker to think he was pipped at the post. 

Transphobia?

And how would I be "transphobic", when I have been a champion of the value of diversity? Trans people and I lived in different subcultures and our paths rarely crossed. Although I marched with Gay Liberation in the good old days of the 60's, I can't take care of all the world's ills. 

Also a reminder that I am not of Christian heritage and don't buy into the Christian binary of Good and Evil. And if you are of  Christian heritage, even if you don't identify, you may be unconsciously influenced by binarism... 

So you may not know that there are many culture that recognises more than 2 genders.  Along with many indigenous belief systems that are based on actual indigenous land, not on Roman Imperialism, the Talmud recognises up to 8 genders, all with their own names! 

My post which is claimed to be "transphobic" was NOT based on binarism, but on my cultural background and my other major in Anthropology, which I much preferred, and which obviously was aware that there could be more than 2 genders separate from sex (biological sex). 

The biological reality is that Trans"women" may either be biological male or intersexual.  Biological males can never be women.  But instead of digging their heels in, they might learn from non-binary cultures, and make up a new appellation for themselves. It's not hard to do. I don't care if I'm bragging, but when there is no name for an emergent social/cultural phenomenon,except a derogatory one owned by the dominant culture, make up your own. That's what I did with "Neurodiversity".

I have made it perfectly clear that I am no Pollyanna who believes everyone is inherently "good", 

But I do strongly believe that society has a responsibility to find a niche for everyone, even if that niche is protective custody. 

ENVY 

We all partake of the 7 Deadly Sins. But of then, Envy is the deadliest. 

Can it be possible that Chapman and Walker, presumably insane with jealousy because they coulda, shoulda, woulda come up with Neurodiversity, but didna, have kept picking at the wound until they came up with a strategy to destroy my reputation.

And they managed to persuade a couple of second fiddles to accompany them. Sadly one of them, a woman, has sent me shockingly vicious letters, presumably based on misinformation someone fed her or social media scuttlebutt.. 

And then this crew duped a reputable journal Sage into publishing their confabulations, which were craftily garnished with impressive quotes from important postmodernist (or whatever the latest fad is) theorists. 

I've long believed that the backlash to all this kind of overreach by a small fraction of an already small minority would lead to the election of Trump.

The analysis I'm reading is that sadly, I was right. 

Anyway, I am in my mid 70's now, and I'm over their envious bullshit, but not till I have refuted it in the name of intellectual integrity

Nuff said. 

Sage Journals publish defamatory allegations by Chapman, Walker et al

First published April 7th 2024
More Relevant than Ever

  
It  is now 19th December 2024. It has taken me this long to send a second rebuttal of the fallacious and  libellous hatchet job published by the highly esteemed multinational academic publishing juggernaut Sage Journals.  Sage's publishers have dug their heels in, claiming that (conveniently nameless!) "persons with expertise" have "fact-checked" this negligently researched and easily disproven tripe. 
Did these expert personages ever venture beyond their local Dublin public library? 

FTR, I and my university are Australian.  This specious article is nothing more than a concoction by Northern Hemisphere academic rivals who have followed in my footsteps in the Neurodiversity discourse, in a desperate attempt, 25 years later,  to clamber over me on the greasy pole to academic supremacy. Although I'm not an academic, nor have I ever been. Amazing what you can get done with a BA Hons thesis. Why would I want to go further? I might have, except that I was an impoverished sole parent of an autistic child, and needed to earn a living. 

So, Sage rejected my first rebuttal, and responded by sooling their in-house legal standover people onto me.

As the (now) disabled septuagenarisn sole-parent of a disabled adult, both of us living week to week on minimal age and disability pensions respectively, I am in no position to take on this multinational juggernaut of publishing.  

But at least they can't sue me because I live in public housing and have absolutely no savings. In no small measure, due to them. 

But I suppose I can always use the computer at my local library if I finally lose everything 

Which is getting close, because my desktop is buggy. And my laptop has died, and I can't afford to do a damn thing about it. . 

Nevertheless

I'm damned

if I'm gunna let
this cabal of jealous 

Pommy and Yankee bastards

who concocted this crap,

who reckon they
coulda, woulda, shoulda

have come up with 

Neurodiversity  

but couldn't and didnt, 

No, I won't let them 

get away with their 

wilfully negligent calumnies. 

I have had to go into paragraph by paragraph in detail to refute their trash. 

To think I used to have a life! To think I thought I'd be spending my 8th decade gardening!

Instead I'm breaking my back to ensure that these buckaneers (sic) don't get away with this. 

I'm doing it purely for the sake of taking a stand against this world of 

FAKE NEWS

 but also for the innate satisfaction of seeing these villains 

with their high-falutin' academic drivel and their pretentions citations bite the dust

THAT FELT GOOD!

*********************

Anyway: let's get back to polite academic patter

Here is the outrage in its full glory. 

My "Abstract"

The highly-rated Sage Journals:Autism has published an "Open Letter" authored by a group of 6 Northern Hemisphere authors, Chapman, Walker et al. Their letter seeks to downgrade my contribution to the Neurodiversity discourse. Their "correction" is riddled with false allegations. 

This post is intended to correct their erroneous so-called "corrections", and a copy will be sent to the publishers.  

Introduction

CLICK TO ENLARGE

A group of six individuals identifying themselves as "an international group of autistic scholars of autism and neurodiversity"’ have achieved the publication of a defamatory ‘open letter’ that undermines my pioneering role in the development of the Neurodiversity paradigm . This letter
appeared in the esteemed academic journal Sage Publications. 

The 6 authors claim that they are offering a "correction" of my reputation, ostensibly "in the public interest".

I intend to show their so-called "correction" is in fact Misinformation at best (assuming their motives are unimpeachable). At worst,  I would hope, not deliberate Disinformation

It is outrageous and disappointing that such highly respected academics and scholars would stoop so low.  It has taken months of my time and energy to refute their claims, and there has been

a huge impost on my emotional and physical wellbeing.

It is understandable given the reputation of these scholars that Sage Journals' has accepted their immaculately laid out and referenced piece. But now that I have presented Sage with my extensive rebuttal of the authors' mendacious claims,  and asked them to redact the article, the editor of Sage Journals Autism has dug her heels in and refused, thus: 

STOP PRESS! The Sage Publications legal team responded thus to my complaint about the many false allegations by my prime contenders in the Neurodiversity paradigm, Dr Robert J. Chapman, Nick Walker and a few of their devotees. Sage claims that: "The publication was in accordance with our standard practices  and all legal requirements - reviewed by both the editor and numerous people with expertise in the matter concerned." It does not say much for Sage editor Kerry Barner, or her team of “expert fact checkers”, that they did not approach me when they might reasonably have assumed that I would obviously possess original documents. Which I do.  Note that I cannot afford a "legal team" to go against the mighty multinational Sage Corporation. Thanks to my scurrilous detractors, I have not had any paid work since July 2023. I subsist on the scant Australian Age Pension. I can only assume that Sage's expert fact checkers have not realised that there is actually a Southern Hemisphere and that "here be scholars".

Discussion

The prestigious academic journal Sage Publications has posted an "open letter" aimed at diminishing my role in the development of the Neurodiversity discourse. The letter was submitted by a group of 6 northern hemisphere individuals who describe themselves as an "international group of autistic scholars of autism and neurodiversity"

The authors are Monique Botha, Robert Chapman, Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, Steven Kapp, Abbs Stannard Ashley and Nick Walker.

I will show that the authors' letter is riddled with errors and misrepresentations which belie the research skills and ethics such highly-qualified scholars are expected to possess. 

I am amazed by the group's foolhardiness: did the possibility not occur to them that I might have original documents? Indeed I do, and can thus offer a genuine correction of their so-called "correction". 

I will not attempt to guess (at least in print) this group's motivation in submitting such an easily refuted mish-mash of wishful misinformation,  and will leave it to readers to draw your own conclusions..

Click to view full refutation
on Dropbox  

Refutation

You can view the detailed paragraph by paragraph refutation on Dropbox. Yes, you will find it ia complicated because lies are simple but truth is complex. 

NB: If you have been influenced by the Sage letter and intend referencing it, please exercise due diligence and read this first. 

Misrepresentations

The first misrepresentation - albeit minor compared to what follows - is that the 6 authors appropriate for themselves the rubric of an "international" group. They constitute a Northern Hemisphere Anglosphere cartel, as they gained their qualifications in the USA and UK, thus benefitting from the North's intellectual hegemony. 

For the record, my qualifications are from an Australian University. My work is thus from the Southern Hemisphere. We Oceanians know only too well the colonising tendencies of the geographic "North". Unfortunately I cannot afford to go north to "network" and promote myself. But I will not sit quietly when these Northerners attempt to colonise my work and do their utmost to sideline me and cast shadows over my reputation.

Criticism is not the same as Critique

Social Science scholars welcome critique - that is the very basis of the scientific method. But critique is supposed to be based on verifiable and accredited facts, expressed in respectful dialogue. It is thus disappointing to find that the information provided by the six authors is based on: 

1. unreliable testimonies from non-academic source(s)
2. a failure to follow accepted academic practice by checking original documents
3. social media gossip
4. misinterpretations (or willful disinterpretations?) which would clearly be recognised as self-serving by all but the most innocent reader... or the average scandal-loving troll.

Are the six authors engaging in wilful competitive sledging? Or is it simply wishful thinking by envious rivals trying to clamber over each other up the greasy pole to academic glory? Whichever the case, it is immaterial because scholars and academics are meant to research their claims, and it is glaringly obvious that the six authors have failed to do so. 

Relying on Unreliable Memoirs

It is hugely dispiriting to find that these credentialed scholars, including a couple of luminaries of the "Neurodiversity" discourse, continue to rely on the testimonies and "memories" of a non-scholar, Martijn "McDutchie" Dekker. I have comprehensively rebutted Dekker's libellous op-ed several months ago. If you possess an academic background and have the accompanying responsibilities of transparency and accountability,  or even if you are not an academic but have a serious interest in this issue, my rebuttal of Dekker's unscholarly opinions and memories is pre-requisite reading. 

More so, it is disturbing that the combined research skills of these highly-credentials scholars did not extend to the most basic tenets of fact-checking, i.e.

1.  going back to original source documents
2. interviewing the subject of their allegations before rushing into print. 

There are several possible explanation for such outstanding negligence:

1. Northern Hemisphere educational standards have fallen so low that anyone can get a doctorate without basic research skills.
   JS: Clearly this is not the case. This cartel have excellent research skills, unless they choose to disregard them 
   
   
2. Northern Hemisphere doctoral programs do not include a formal ethics review.
   JS: This is hard to believe. Bit if if the G6 were not required to complete an ethics component, can we conclude that they have no innate ability to distinguish right from wrong without supervision?
   
   
3. Wilful disregard and fear of accidentally discovering evidence that does not support their urgent need to supersede me 
   
   
4. Could it be humanly possible that their scurrilous letter was born of unbearable resentment and frustration  that they "coulda, shoulda, woulda" thought of the "Neurodiversity" buzzword first themselves?  But didn't.

I am not hard to find, and indeed Chapman has contacted me by video conference in the past. I need hardly point out that it is so much easier to libel a fellow scholar if you don't have to "look them in the eye" (In the case of autistics who, like myself, can have difficulty with eye-contact, I mean "at least be in the presence of the accused, by whatever means, whether video, audio or otherwise").

The Blume Issue:

I attribute the constant accreditation off the term Neurodiversity to American freelance journalist  Harvey Blume to what I like to call "a potent cocktale" (sic) of sexism and north-centricism. Perhaps it is difficult for northerners to believe that southern hemisphere people, and female to boot, are capable of coming up with big ideas all by ourselves!

If the authors had made even the slightest effort to contact me before thundering in to discredit me, or had they shown even a modicum of common sense, they might have learned some basic facts. Including that I have retained  my correspondence with Harvey Blume, which shows, unsurprisingly,  that he knew nothing about disability politics, and learned the term "neurodiversity" from me. It is galling that Blume often gets equal billing with me in the history of Neurodiversity, when he was simply a freelance journalist specialising in interviewing literary figures, who happened to learn the term from me in online and phone conversations. 

Blume wrote on the topic of “autistics in cyberspace” once or twice, a quarter century ago (!),  then moved on to chase other rabbits. 

Meanwhile, this was my life's work, born out of great hardship and struggle, and written in 1998 because I didn't want others affect by Autism to have to endure the same. 

Amateur sources e.g. Wikipedia

I blame Wikipedia and its amateur editors. But so much more culpable are those lazy academics who use Wikipedia as a research authority.

I would hope the academic authors have not been relying on Wikipedia's nameless and self-appointed northern "editors" and their dubious qualifications - if these people have any. These amateurs have been playing around with my entry for going on 3 decades now. I long ago gave up trying to set the record straight with them. 

It seems to be completely beyond Wikipedia's amateur so-called "editors" to imagine that someone who is neither American nor Male can nevertheless be capable of coming up with a "Big Idea" all by ourselves! 

Nor do journalistic ethics or the laws of defamation appear to daunt the Wikipedia crew. Hardly surprising,  since they well know that defamation cases can only be afforded by corporations and billionaires. 

Follow up with Sage

My detailed refutation of the  authors’ self-serving claims is currently with the editor of Sage Publications, Kerry Barner. Despite my extensive documention, she has refused my request to withdraw the authors’ scurrilous letter. However she has offered space for me to refute them. Great! I am in my 70s.  I am supposed to be cleaning up my affairs aka "Swedish Death Cleaning". Thanks’ to Barner’s intransigence, am I to spend my remaining time on this earth on refuting these despicable calumnies? It appears that while liars can say anything they damn well please, their victims have to be absolutely meticulous, because those who are driven by envy and malice will make a mountain out of a molehill of the tiniest ambiguity.  I has taken months out of my life already just to write this blog piece in accessible language. 

As I have said previously in this blog, with reference to Dekker's calumnies: 

 

A lie will travel around the world  while the truth is putting its boots on

Whether the six authors’s allegations are deliberately made in bad faith, or simply based on wishful thinking cherry-picked from social media gossip is irrelevant.

Ignorance of the laws of defamation is not a legal excuse. We are meant to have an innate moral and ethical sense! Luckily for the six authors, I can't afford a lawyer

 

And so much for Solidarity and Collegiality
in the Neurodivergent Community!

* Libel is a defamatory statement that is written. Slander is a defamatory statement that is oral.

** Excuse the Freudian Slip. It's the truth though. Also, I'm aware that several members of this crew are female. The feminist concept of false consciousness is relevant. It may feel more powerful and useful to side with the dominant group.    

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

APPENDIX 

Note for the academically minded

This is a personal blog article, I have not written this letter in high flown academese, which posits itself as "pure fact without emotional bias". As a sociologist, and in accordance with the views of feminist sociology, I have long critiqued the actual impossibility of  "what epistemologists have called the false objectivity of the stance of positivist social research, which they dub “the view from nowhere” (Haraway, 1991, Thesis P21 ). Feminist philosophers like Sandra Harding  have instead insisted that researchers must reveal their biases their standpoints, in what can be called “a view from somewhere”. (ibid) 

. 

Positioning myself: I am

• an adult biological female
• the 3rd of at least 4 generations of autistic women
• a shy, nerdy child, a born outsider diagnosed after nearly 50 years only when Asperger Syndrome was recognised in the 1990s 

I built on that legacy to write the first sociological exploration of the rise of what I called "a new social movement based on neurological diversity", in the course of which I coined the term "Neurodiversity" to suggest a catchy banner term for that movement. 

References

Thesis

Singer, J. (1998).  Odd People In: The Birth of Community Amongst People on the “Autistic Spectrum”: a personal exploration of a New Social Movement based on Neurological Diversity. A thesis presented to the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Social Science (Honours), Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney, 1998.

Book

Singer, J. (2016) NeuroDiversity: The birth of an idea. Kindle version. Retrievable from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/NeuroDiversity-Birth-Idea-Judy-Singer /dp/B01HY0QTEE/

Book Chapters

Singer, J. (1999). Why can't you be normal for once in your life?: From a 'Problem with No Name' to a new category of disability. In Corker, M. and French, S. (Eds.). Disability Discourse Open University Press UK https://www.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

The Price of Fame: Envy

First published September 2024

Click image to read my rebuttal of the false allegations
made by my Northern rivals, Chapman, Walker et al

************************************************

I cannot deny enjoying the recognition that I have received since the 1998 honours thesis in which I coined the term Neurodiversity was rediscovered in 2013 by Steve Silberman*.  I worked hard for it and based it on the "lived experience" of my family, a life of hardship, outsiderhood, disclocation and poverty in a land of opportunity, which I later realised had much to do with the fact that the female line of my family are all autistic. And compounded by the injuries of history, which turned us into refugees from Eastern Europe when I was 5 years old.  But with Fame comes a price. We are all prone to a selection of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I am not in a confessional mood about mine. So let's move straight on to the sins of the self-identified "international scholars" who over the past 6 months since the 12th March 2024. have been making my life a misery with their selectively researched and libellous falsehoods I don't know which other sins they are capable of, but there is one that is suggestive. The perceptive among you will have guessed it... Envy  Hieronymus Bosch the Seven Deadly Sins

Over the past year, two prominent figures in the development of the neurodiversity discourse, Robert J Chapman and Nick Walker, along with their associates, have initiated a disinformation campaign targeting me

At best, for their sake, and my own belief in human decency, I can only hope these people sincerely believe their calumnies, and this is not simply a pitiful case of vicious academic rivalry.

They appear to rely heavily on the testimony of Martijn Dekker, a computer programmer, who had the skills to set up InLv an online email discussion group.  But as far as I can see he has no knowledge of the discipline of sociology. . 

Dekker has written a blog piece that is a massive and uneducated attack on my reputation, and dare I say tinged with resentment and malice, for reasons I cannot understand. 

He is so ignorant of what sociologists do that he claims that I got my "ideas" from InLv

Not at all. 

Click to enlarge

I "got" my ideas from Disability Studies and the Social Constructionist Model of Disability 

What I got from InLv was just some of my data. 

Because InLv was far from the only group I belonged to. 

I was a member of several other Autism support groups,: Some international, some  Australian,  some online, some face to face: 

Online: 

I was a member of 

• InLv of course, as above. 
• the Leeds University Disability List, the pre-eminent international discussion group for academics and scholars in the Disability Studies field
• Ozautism, an Australian Support Group
• the  Women from Another Planet collective formed to publish a collection of essays by autistic women on their experiences. I wrote the preface to the collection. 
• and a few others whose name I have forgotten - this was 20+ years ago! 

I created 

• ASpar, an online international discussion group, for people raised by Autistic parents. 

In person:

I was 

• the secretary of Sydney and regions largest autism support group, the Inner West Autism and Aspergers Support Group
• an elected director of Shelter NSW the peak body for low income renters. both private and public housing, where I advocated for more research on the relationship between Autism, poverty and homelessness
• the instigator and then co-creator in 2003 of ASteen a social club for autistic teenagers which had around 200 members by the time I handed over the reigns when my daughter was out of her teen. I provided the parameters of the club, which were my insistence that we would be strictly about having fun - fortnightly weekend family outings to fun venues in sSydney and surrounds and camps, and absolutely NOT about trying to change our children. More than 20 years later, I see the club is still going strong! 

My perceptions of InLv

InLv was a support group where people shared narratives basically about sharing our experiences of growing up autistic. But what struck me about this group, was the lack of awareness of the extent to which disability can be socially constructed.  It was not surprising because the Social Model of Disability was not well known in those days, so I was fortunate in discovering Disability Studies in those days.  I believe I made some efforts to respond by adding some insights about the social construction of disability, but on the whole I was glad to be given the space to share my own experiences of exclusion and discrimination as an autist, and I did not wish to preach. 

I salute Martijn Dekker for making this group possible with his technical expertise. Because InLv was the largest of al these groups, and the one in which I participated most,  I decided to ask several members for permission to quote them in my post.  With their agreement, we also decided on aliases for them in work. All who I approached agreed. There was one individual who did wish to be identified, and I honoured that too. I cannot recall now whether they were InLv members or not. 

Please take care to read my line by line refutation of Dekkers calumnies on this blog at Confabulations or Lies? A Correction of Martijn Dekker''s False "Memories".

It is extraordinary that despite the combined intelligence that doctorates should surely confer on these 6 eminent scholars, they have somehow managed to suspend all disbelief at Dekkers clearly unscholarly opinions. Again, it is anyone's guess why they would stoop to this. 

The defamatory and easily-refuted falsehoods of this confederacy have had a huge impost on my time and well-being.While easily refuted with factual evidence, the process is immensely time-consuming, and has created ongoing damage to my health and well-being. 

This gang have managed to get their farrago of misinformation published by the esteemed academic journal Sage Publication. It has taken me months to refute their confabulated and cherry-picked allegations. 

Note that unlike this crew, I possess original documents, while they rely on internet scuttlebutt and their their own wilful imaginations. 

It is so much easier to make up a story than to meticulously refute it,  but it takes a massive effort to disprove it.  Because... 

I am just about finished with my line by line refutations, 

I have made a start on 2 refutations here:

Reflections on the Neurodiversity Paradigm: Sage Journals publish defamatory allegations by Chapman, Walker et al (neurodiversity2.blogspot.com)

Reflections on the Neurodiversity Paradigm: My Response to Martijn Dekker's Libels (neurodiversity2.blogspot.com)

How they display themselves versus the reality

 Draw your own conclusions

* A note on Steve Silberman

I am grateful for this article by Steve Silberman for bringing my work to wider attention. 

Sadly Silberman fell for the Transphobia Libel, disseminated it, and refused to discuss it with me. 

For that refusal, I am not feeling forgiving. I see it as evidence of underlying misogyny, a biased willingness to believe derogatory information from a sense of gay victimhood,  and unforgivable for an experienced journalist.