Sunday, September 13, 2009

ISA chair Benny resigns

I am at City Airport in London enjoying the free WiFi! I am just coming from the British Stammering Association conference. The main news I have to report is that Benny has resigned as ISA chair, mainly due to the pressure created by the public discussion on the internal disputes on the ISA board and aired here on TheStutteringBrain. Some national associations have apparently raised the pressures, and he finally had to resign or face an empty association. It is a bit scary to see how influential an Internet blog can be effectively bypassing the national stuttering associations. Would we have known without TheStutteringBrain? No national association would have published Dave' interview with Suzanna, but I can. No, it would have dragged on and on and on. Of course, TheStutteringBrain has not caused the resignation, but has only made public the lingering mismanagement at the helm of ISA. At the conference, I have conducted an interview with ex-ISA director Keith Boss which will be published here shortly. I hope that the ISA board is resolving the issues working on ISA becoming stronger and more effective. I also hope that Benny keeps being actively involved: I don't question your commitment, but you were not the right person to lead ISA.

The conference was good. Lot of things happened. Mark Onslow gave a talk focusing on social anxiety, and reported new results from the Reilly study. And he mentioned me three time. Is be secretly reading my blog! ;-) I have given two workshops. They went well as far as I can tell. I also chatted with Paul and Vlad on lots of research stuff. More soon.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Onslow is a crackpot. He deserves to be given a "crackpot award"

Anonymous said...

In what context did Mark Onslow mention your name? (Very Important)

ex. Tom Weidig, he has a blog, he is a crackpot....

or

ex. Tom has been critical of my research, he is good at math but doesn't get it....

Why don't you ask Mark Onslow if he reads your blog?

Tom Weidig said...

He publishes his research, presents arguments, and bases his arguments on empirical findings. And he received a lot of research funding. I just do not agree with some of his work, especially on the outcome studies. And I do not agree with some of the marketing of the Lidcombe treatment, but in my view he has realized that he overstretched the evidence for a Lidcombe "cure" and is coming down to earth...

He just stated that I do not agree with some of his statements.

Tom

Anonymous said...

It is worth remembering that Mark Onslow and his team Downunder are all funded by research grants from the Australian government. In order to continue their funding they have to please the Australian government which has an agenda of trying to reduce the cost and time to treat people who stutter down to NOTHING! It appears he will soon have research in place to prove that people who stutter can be treated over the telephone which will ultimately filter back to us here in the USA and undermine truely helpful treatment for people who stutter which is not Telehealth or the Camperdown Program.

Anonymous said...

Onslow has privately told me that he considers adult stuttering to be a lost cause. He can see no effective treatment other than the current fluency shapng techniques. He prefers to focus on infant/childhood stuttering (most infant stutterers "grow out" of their stutters during their teen years). Onslow is quack and a crackpot.

Anonymous said...

Tom, what do you think of the Camperdown program?

If the studies on Lidcombe had a much better sample size, would it convince you (make you believe).

Not entirely the Aussie researchers fault, they tried to have a good sample size....but shit happens.

ex. Families move....

There is no evidence that the researchers decided not to contact (decided not to include) kids who had relapsed/started stuttering again.

Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), means that someone reviewed it....just wish we knew who reviewed it and if she/he understands statistics or not. My guess is no, unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

This is what Tom said from ISAD 2008: "To summarise, I am just fed up with sloppy pseudo-scientific replies that 99% of the clinicians and stuttering community swallow happily because no-one actually sits down and looks at the trial carefully. Or she or he would find that it is a can of worms. But let me conclude by saying that at least you try to do evidence-based research. So the fact that I can criticise your research is progress in itself for I cannot criticise other approaches because they do not do any outcome research."

Based on the comments above, the clinican doesn't have any choice other than Lidcombe, correct?

If the clinician wants to use evidence based practice and not get sued in the future?

What else is there, what is the alternative?

Tom Weidig said...

Actually, I agree that "Onslow ... considers adult stuttering to be a lost cause." for the majority of adult stutterers in terms of getting much more fluent. But we can certainly reduce social anxiety and increase life quality. That's what Mark talked about in his talk. So he has actually changed his mind and now says that at least social anxiety should be treated! That is not a lost cause!

And in a sense kids are also a lost cause in that those who won't recover probably have strong structural abnormality.

I don't mind telehealth if it works! I know other therapies which use it as part of the therapy. It can be useful.

Tom Weidig said...

"" Based on the comments above, the clinican doesn't have any choice other than Lidcombe, correct?

If the clinician wants to use evidence based practice and not get sued in the future?

What else is there, what is the alternative? ""

Well. It depends on your stance. No evidence is neither bad nor good. Of course, if Lidcombe works better than others which hasn't been shown yet, it might be irresponsible. But one needs at least 2 more independent large samples.

Tom Weidig said...

>>> If the studies on Lidcombe had a much better sample size, would it convince you (make you believe).

It would close a lot of loophole, and I would trust the results more.

But even now, their long-term paper shows relapse and a recovery rate from 85%. So no magic cure here!

>>> Not entirely the Aussie researchers fault, they tried to have a good sample size....but shit happens. ex. Families move....

No, it is their fault. They started with a sample size of 100, but then reduced it to 50. I guess two reasons: the parents in the no-treatment arm were unhappy, and their incompetent statistician said that the size is OK!

But are you saying that because it is not their fault, the results should be used??? You would walk on a bridge where the head engineer had depression??

No. No. No

>> There is no evidence that the researchers decided not to contact (decided not to include) kids who had relapsed/started stuttering again.

I am not saying that, but it does reduce the too small sample even further!


>>Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), means that someone reviewed it....just wish we knew who reviewed it and if she/he understands statistics or not. My guess is no, unfortunately.


They do understand stats but passively. They applied the standard framework but it doesn't work for stuttering!!!

Anonymous said...

"Onslow has privately told me that he considers adult stuttering to be a lost cause".

I suspect that the reason he says this is because he has never had any success in treating adults because of the shorter and shorter treatment programs that he insists on trying to develop to keep his employers, the Australian government, happy. Anyone who is that desperate to prove that stuttering can be treated over the phone has a lack of understanding of adult stuttering. I believe his Camperdown program has been or should be abandoned as it is unsuccessful and efforts to prove it is successful by being creative with data samples will put stuttering treatment and understanding back a long way. I believe he is now running 1 week intensives which we here in the USA have found to be too short a treatment period for people to develop a lasting behavioural change resulting in a reasonable chance of improved fluency. I think he also uses students to do the intensive treatment which is a questionable approach to start with and although they are being supervised , I also suspect the track record of the supervisors in successfully treating adult stutterers is questionable as well.

Anonymous said...

Giving researchers the ability to reduce their original sample population in any way gives the researcher an avenue to manipulate their data to their benefit by excluding certain parts of the sample by claiming that the excluded participant/s pulled out of the research project or that a post treatment participant in research could not be contacted. Studies that are based on results that came from a reduced sample from the original sample at the start of the research should be looked on with a level of scepticism and more consideration should be given as to why particpants pull out.

Anonymous said...

"Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), means that someone reviewed it....just wish we knew who reviewed it and if she/he understands statistics or not. My guess is no, unfortunately".

There are few people with the expertise to critically review a lot of this research. Reviewers tend to be people skilled in ensuring that the research was conducted in accordance with generally accepted research protocol. Those people know nothing about stuttering. Where a peer professional with an equivalent level of stuttering knowledge is called on to review a research paper these people tend, in many cases, to be very lenient in their critical review as they know that the person that they are reviewing will soon be reviewing a research paper theirs. The people with a supposed high level of understanding of stuttering in the professional field is quite small in each country especially outside of our beloved USA.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I agree that "Onslow ... considers adult stuttering to be a lost cause." for the majority of adult stutterers in terms of getting much more fluent. But we can certainly reduce social anxiety and increase life quality. That's what Mark talked about in his talk. So he has actually changed his mind and now says that at least social anxiety should be treated! That is not a lost cause!


Well it is a lost cause if you are going to limit yourself to using CBT to address social anxiety, as I suspect Onslow is alluding to, especially on chronic adult stutterers with years of evidence of what causes their severe blocking behaviour.

Anonymous said...

I'm really happy to see that a lot of people consider Onslow to be a crackpot. All that's needed is to formalize the process and bestow upon him a crackpot award.

Anonymous said...

I don't think Onslow is a crackpot. Maybe Tom can put up a poll for fun.

Anonymous said...

Mark Onslow is not a crackpot. Maybe misguided but not a crackpot. He deserves more respect. Whoever it is who has this as their opinion needs to look at themselves in the mirror and they will see who is the "crackpot".

Tom Weidig said...

I completely and strongly agree with the last commentator: "Mark Onslow is not a crackpot. Maybe misguided but not a crackpot. He deserves more respect. Whoever it is who has this as their opinion needs to look at themselves in the mirror and they will see who is the "crackpot"."

Leave him alone, but not his work! Comment on his work. Be specific.

He does what he does, because he believes in it. Right or wrong. I agree with some work and disagree with other work. But he is most certainly not a crackpot. Any more crackpot comments will be deleted by me.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're denying people their freedom of speech. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Tom, it is fair to criticize his published work etc, but to criticize the man personally is no better than school-yard name-calling.

Also, I don't understand the anonymous that said "Well it is a lost cause if you are going to limit yourself to using CBT to address social anxiety". CBT is a well-evidenced treatment for a variety of psychological and cognitive difficulties, whether they manifest in conjunction with stuttering or not. It makes sense to try it out.

Anonymous said...

Tom,

In that case, the next time I attend a conference that includes Mark Onslow, I'll be sure to wear a t-shirt with a picture of Onslow's face and the slogan, "Onslow's research is misguided". That way, when he sees my t-shirt, he'll realize that his research sucks and then he'll quit. Good idea? And if that doesn't work, I'll go with the crackpot strategy.