Is aspergers existence proven scientifically?

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Joined: 21 Nov 2011
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11 May 2012, 10:22 am

aspergers syndrome != bad social skills

its much much more severe and complex than that... really.
trust me... I live with aspergers... and really suffer from it. It's more than just bad social skills.
just google it.

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Clinically diagnosed AS. Hates having it.
I'm very paranoid. I have inferiority complex (a.k.a i always think others are better than me, mostly b/c of my AS)
My AS is getting worse as time goes on.
WORST PROBLEM: HAVING AS

Sweetleaf
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11 May 2012, 10:23 am

gaffa91 wrote:

Ellingtonia wrote:

Asperger's syndrome, as defined by any diagnostic criteria, is really a collection of behavioural symptoms. There are undeniably many people who have these symptoms, and so Aspergers undeniably exists.

So it's like "you act like this way, so we decide you are not normal and we give you this kind of syndrome". BUT any diagnosis should be based on scientific facts, not just the way they seem to act.

Well its how we act due to how we function, its not like we choose to act like we have aspergers and then it gets diagnosed.....there are obvious differences in functioning between those on the autism spectrum and neurotypicals.

And there is probably financial interest about labeling people sick as well. The more diseases and syndromes etc. we get, there is more medicine about to cure or treat it. So more "sick" people -> more money. Do you really think that medicine business is based only on real proven diseases etc. , not financial interests? Because there really are people who are taking mecidine to treat their traits.

I think they manipulate people with real diseases/disorders.........but I don't think the majority of disorders are made up and fake.

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gaffa91
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11 May 2012, 10:33 am

zombiegirl2010 wrote:

I have read that Aspies tend to have more gray matter in the brain. https://www.google.com/webhp?rlz=1C1DVC ... 66&bih=677

Thank you, but is it just because of possible asperger's? There can be other factors too which influences the scores as well (like sample size).

But gotta go to the grocery store, bye >>>

ToughDiamond
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11 May 2012, 10:37 am

Ellingtonia wrote:

It would be a lot more certain if we did something like this:
Take half of the supposedly diagnostic traits of AS (funny eye contact, special interests, or whatever) and find as many people as you can who seem to have all those traits. Now see whether those same people tend to have the other half of the traits. If they do, to a statistically significant level compared with the general population, then that would be some measure of the "realness" of AS. Rather like the way we know that blonde hair and blue eyes tend to occur in the same people, so we could probably demonstrate that the blonde-haired-blue-eyed "syndrome" was real, i.e. there was a distinct population satisfying both diagnostic criteria and another different, distinct population satisfying neither, with not as much in between as would be the case if the two traits were not really associated together.

Is that logical and factually about right?

Last edited by ToughDiamond on 11 May 2012, 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

edgewaters
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11 May 2012, 10:37 am

gaffa91 wrote:

Like brain scan, EEG or whatsoever. Why this information is not public? Otherwise there is absolutely no sense diagnosing aspergers if there is no 100% prove about it.

You don't seem to really comprehend what science is or what scientific proof consists of. You seem to have a very "mystical" (for lack of a better word) view of it, where a magical man uses ritual objects to divine things and make them "real". That's not science. That's about as far as you can possibly get from science. That is the sort of juju/hocus-pocus image of science perpetuated by the media, for consumption by people who can't really grasp much more than that.

Last edited by edgewaters on 11 May 2012, 10:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ellingtonia
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11 May 2012, 10:38 am

gaffa91 wrote:

So it's like "you act like this way, so we decide you are not normal and we give you this kind of syndrome". BUT any diagnosis should be based on scientific facts, not just the way they seem to act.

The way it SHOULD work is "Doctor, I have a problem with X behaviour and Y behaviour" - "Hmm, do you also sometimes do Z behaviour" - "Actually yes, all the time!" - "well it sounds like you might have aspergers, lets discuss some therapies that many have found useful"

This is of course a huge simplification, but the point is that these behaviours cause problems which require help. It's not that doctors go door to door labelling people as abnormal.

One of the DSM criteria, and in my opinion on of the more important ones, is "The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." or in simpler terms 'The symptoms are a significant problem for the patient'. This means that even if you have ALL of the behavioural symptoms, if you are functioning fine and these symptoms don't give you any problems (kind of hard to imagine) you SHOULD NOT be diagnosed.

zombiegirl2010
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11 May 2012, 10:40 am

gaffa91 wrote:

zombiegirl2010 wrote:

I have read that Aspies tend to have more gray matter in the brain. https://www.google.com/webhp?rlz=1C1DVC ... 66&bih=677

Thank you, but is it just because of possible asperger's? There can be other factors too which influences the scores as well (like sample size).

But gotta go to the grocery store, bye >>>

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/in-br ... ross-sexes

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Your Aspie score: 193 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 7 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

ToughDiamond
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11 May 2012, 10:42 am

Delphiki wrote:

ToughDiamond wrote:

Given that nobody seems yet able to prove AS using brain scans, is there any good statistical evidence for the existence of AS? It seems to be that, if AS is real, then the traits would "cluster" in individuals. Should be a walk in the park for a good scientist. I can't believe it's not been tried.

A walk in the park? how would you know?

I don't, to be honest. I'm just trying to get those good scientists off their butts. But really, the stats can't be all that hard, can they?

bnky
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11 May 2012, 10:54 am

OP, your profile says you have been diagnosed with asperger's. I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would diagnose without also giving you some information about what aspergers is?

Ellingtonia
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11 May 2012, 10:56 am

ToughDiamond wrote:

Ellingtonia wrote:

I saw a video talking about a study similar to what you describe a few months ago. I'll scour the web to find it again tomorrow morning after I get some sleep (its nearly 2am here in Oz)

Basically though, they split aspergers up into three areas of dysfunction, found that a certain proportion of the general population, let's say 1/10, suffered in each individual category. Using basic statistics, if there was zero correlation between the three areas, then the proportion of people that suffer in all three should be 1/1000 (1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = 1/1000). The actual proportion of people suffering in all three (and thus having aspergers) was much higher, like 1/100. Not quite as simple as the blond-hair blue-eyed example, but good enough for me.

To be clear though, I've made up those figures to illustrate their method. I'll try to find the real figures and the video in the morning.

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11 May 2012, 11:08 am

Ellingtonia wrote:

I knew there was something like that for reality-checking. Hope you find the video

gaffa91
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11 May 2012, 11:11 am

bnky wrote:

OP, your profile says you have been diagnosed with asperger's. I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would diagnose without also giving you some information about what aspergers is?

I was 8yrs old when I was dx'ed so I can't remember what he/she have said about it.

pokerface
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11 May 2012, 11:13 am

gaffa91 wrote:

Like brain scan, EEG or whatsoever. Why this information is not public? Otherwise there is absolutely no sense diagnosing aspergers if there is no 100% prove about it.

Even so, why it is diagnosed if the diagnosis doesn't help directly? I mean people can have bad social skills WITHOUT having aspergers, so it cannot be a syndrome for a "bad social skills". And also people CAN be interested about introverted things WITHOUT having aspergers.

And why bad math skills are not diagnosed but bad social skills are? (special interest are cause of bad social skills after all).

Why people always god damn believe without a doubt on authorities like doctors, polices etc.

The existence of aspergers has been proven by scans. Certain parts of the brain of people with aspergers are a bit different.

Last edited by pokerface on 11 May 2012, 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

gaffa91
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11 May 2012, 11:16 am

pokerface wrote:

The existance of aspergers has been proven by scans. Certain parts of the brain of people with aspergers are a bit different.

More information about these scans, please. Do you have any link about those studies?

soulecho
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11 May 2012, 11:18 am

gaffa91 wrote:

Like brain scan, EEG or whatsoever. Why this information is not public? Otherwise there is absolutely no sense diagnosing aspergers if there is no 100% prove about it.

There is only one discipline in which "proof" exists, and that is Mathematics.

In science, there is no such thing as proof. What you do have in science are assertions backed by a certain degree of confidence (eg: 70%, 90%, 99%, 99.9999999999%, and so on).

Read up on both Confidence Intervals, and Standard Deviation if you wish to understand more about what I just said, I will not elaborate any further here. Nor will I address any more of what you said in the original post, because you're basing everything you said off of an invalid premise.

Sweetleaf
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11 May 2012, 11:19 am

that grocery store must be pretty close

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