Drop the Mouse and Back Away Slowly

Well, I guess the Internet is disinhibiting for a lot of people, as anyone who's spent time on Usenet would know. At any rate: a few months ago I'd read something called the OARacle (Organization for Autism Research newsletter), describing a researcher's work work on social skills with kids ages 8-11 (seriously, doesn't it sound great? Who could resist writing?).

So I blithely dashed off an email to said researcher (okay, the Yale guy, not that I'm encouraging people to start an Internet friendship with him), who was nice enough to reply, albeit briefly. So I figured I'd give him six months and now I'm following up. :-) I'm justifying this b/c this area is so critical and there hasn't been enough research on what actually works: instead there are all these lame-*ss social skills programs out there, and I gather the data don't really support their effectiveness.

I've also written to Soma Mukhopadhyay, who was also very nice and wrote back. I'm still waiting for her book with Portia Iversen, but her first language isn't English, which may be why it's taking so long. And I'm slightly weirded out by what a flash in the pan RPM was: articles in the Times, shows on PBS, and then...nothing. Irritating and somewhat irresponsible media response. Though it seems RPM wasn't precisely embraced by the mainstream autism community, which may contribute. I'm pretty mainstream myself, but this looked like it had undergone some academic investigation.