Talk:Steve Silberman

Removed "Criticism" section

I have removed the section titled "Criticism" from this article. Firstly, it violates a fundamental principle of biographical writing on Wikipedia by creating a separate section to "highlight" critical responses as opposed to a balanced representation of responses to his work. Additionally, there were several poor/unreliable sources such as personal blogs cited, which are not permissible for use in Wikipedia biographies except to support statements by the article subject. Some of the material clearly violated WP:NPOV by making editorial comment about the article subject. Finally, the size of the section placed significantly undue weight on critics' views - given the length of this biography, criticism cannot make up 2/3 of the article text. I invite involved editors to discuss proposed additions here. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 00:11, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Understood. Will think of how to incorporate it properly based on Wikipedia guidelines. Ylevental (talk) 00:23, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed addition to the Neurotribes section: Dr. James C. Harris of Johns Hopkins University criticized Neurotribes, saying that Silberman misrepresented Leo Kanner as somebody that had a negative view towards autistics and their parents. In reality, Kanner advocated for individualized treatment for every child. Professor Michael Sawyer of the University of Adelaide criticized the claim that Henry Cavendish and Paul Dirac would have been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder today, noting their obvious intellectual strengths and ability to function independently in the community. He pointed out that Silberman did not maintain equipoise but discussed the researchers according to the extent to which they supported his views. Psychiatrist Lisa Conlan also pointed out that retrospective diagnoses of historical figures, such as those made by Silberman in Neurotribes, are fraught with difficulties. She said Silberman's portrayal of Neurodiversity is based in identity politics, and failed to critically investigate the think tanks associated with the movement.

Note that there are no personal blogs in this critique. Ylevental (talk) 01:18, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, no. The problem is that you're literally proposing to just add an exact duplicate of critical reviews of a single book to this article that you already added to the article about the specific book. That's not how we write biographies — specific critiques of specific works generally belong on that specific page. We can concisely summarize reviews of his book on this page, but the fact that the overwhelming majority of reviews are positive means that to give due weight to reliable sources in proportion to their points of view, the overwhelming majority of the summary here will be of positive reviews. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 08:35, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree, the "criticism" section is about the book, not the author. All that material belongs in the article on the book. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:01, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

References