A response to the terms in Shah et al's 'Neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodiversity: definition of terms from Scotland's National Autism Implementation Team'.

The Scottish National Autism Implementation Team's neurodiversity terms are a valiant, but flawed, attempt to reconcile different worldviews on neurodiversity. The aim of harmonising different perspectives is laudable; however, we disagree with the use of 'societal norms' in the authors' framework of terms and challenge some of their proposed definitions.

History and First Descriptions of Autism: Asperger Versus Kanner Revisited.

When reading Michael Fitzgerald's chapter entitled 'Autism: Asperger's Syndrome-History and First Descriptions' in 'Asperger's Disorder' edited by Rausch, Johnson and Casanova, a while ago, one of us was struck by his contention that Kanner was guilty of plagiarism as well as non-attribution of Asperger's 1938 paper 'Das psychisch abnorme kind' (Fitzgerald in Asperger's disorder. Informa Healthcare, New York, 2008) published in a Vienna weekly. Steve Silberman has discovered evidence that Kanner rescued Asperger's chief diagnostician from the Nazis in 1944 so must have been aware of Asperger's work and conclusions. Fitzgerald was on the right track but it appears that Kanner may have plagiarised Asperger's ideas rather than his 1938 paper.

'History and first descriptions' of autism: a response to Michael Fitzgerald.

Letter to the editor in response to Michael Fitzgerald's controversial allegation that one of the two pioneers of autism--Leo Kanner--may have been influenced by an earlier paper by the other autism pioneer--Hans Asperger--without acknowledging the debt, and that Kanner may even have been guilty of plagiarising Asperger. In correspondence, Professor Fitzgerald has suggested that I "consider doing my take on the matter". This is it.