Age of Autism Weekly Wrap: “Dear Dr. Olmsted” and the Perils of Credentialism
By Dan Olmsted (in a credentialed-looking photo)
Suddenly, I’ve become an expert on autism – and not just autism, but all things neurological and other stuff I can’t understand.
This all stems from a commentary Mark Blaxill and I wrote last year for the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, which the abstract on PubMed (yes, we’re indexed on PubMed!) summarizes thusly:
“Leo Kanner begins his landmark 1943 case series on autistic children by stating the condition was first brought to his attention in 1938. Recent letters to JADD have described this reference as "mysterious" and speculated it refers to papers published that year by Despert or Asperger. In fact, as Kanner goes on to state, 1938 is when he examined the first child in his case series. An exchange of letters with Despert and later writing by Kanner also point to the originality of his observations.”
Basically, we were disputing previous comments that suggested Kanner was actually referring to a speech Hans Asperger made in 1938, or an article by another child psychiatrist, Louise Despert, that same year.
The truth seemed clear to us. In his second paragraph of Kanner’s article, he explained why he was aware of such children “since 1938”:
“Case 1. Donald T. was first seen in October, 1938.” And there you have it. Kanner cited that encounter several more times and said, stating the obvious, that it was the first time he was aware of autism.
This may seem like dancing on the head of a pin, but trust me, it is really not, because relentless efforts to show that autism existed before Kanner, that he simply copied earlier reports of similar children, and so on, go to the heart of a key question: Is autism really ancient, and is it really increasing? We believe that no, it is not ancient; it was first observed in 1938 by Leo Kanner just as he said in paragraph. And yes, it really is increasing.
We’ll have much more to say on this later this year, but for now it’s enough to add that our paper went through peer review. Peer Review! That was a first for me. The first review comments came back with “Major Revisions Requested” in the subject line, but after several decades of being edited by grouchy city editors, I thought it was pretty tame. I was encouraged to take out a few snarky remarks more appropriate to a blog than a journal, which I was happy to do.
And I have to say, it was kind of cool to finally be peer-reviewed and PubMed indexed after a decade of wandering in the wildnerness of simply being a journalist with a point of view that had no standing in the medical community. All this in a journal that Kanner himself had helped to start.
Then the e-mails started coming. Here’s a recent one:
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Dear Dr. Olmsted,
We would like to follow-up towards our previous mail which you might have missed. We tried to contact you after viewing your published work on "Leo Kanner's Mention of 1938 in His Report on Autism Refers to His First Patient." in [Journal]. Considering the scope of your noteworthy article, we assume that you might be interested in joining us for the 2nd Neurological Disorders Summit (NDS-2016) scheduled during September 07-09, 2016 in Baltimore, USA.”
Oops, they left the journal name out, which made this seem a little less personal than I thought. But really, me at a summit on neurological disorders? What a concept.
Here’s another:
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Dear Dr. Dan Olmsted,
Greetings to the day! I hope you are healthy and happy.
Austin Publishing Group aims to develop into an enlightening interactive network for researchers all over the world through its scientific publications and meetings.
We are gleeful to inform you about volume-2 started in Austin Journal of Autism & Related Disabilities.
The purpose of this letter is to formally invite you, to submit a Manuscript for upcoming edition of this journal.
You are requested to send any type of articles such as (Research; Review; Case Report; Mini Review; Short communication; Opinion; Letter to Editors, Editorials, Commentary, etc.) to increase the visibility of our Journal Austin Journal of Autism & Related Disabilities.
It would be great if you could submit an article so that I could process it for the Issue.
We await your positive reply with interest.
Sincerely,
--
Wow. Just send an article to be “processed.” I was feeling pretty good. Just one more:
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|||
Dear Dr. Dan Olmsted ,
Greetings for the day!
We had a glance at your published article “Leo Kanner's Mention of 1938 in His Report on Autism Refers to His First Patient.”
We found your article very innovative, insightful & interesting; we really value your outstanding contribution towards Scientific Community. The time and attention you devoted in presenting a realistic and pragmatic article was really appreciated.
Being impressed by your quality work, we are contacting you to know if you can associate with us by submitting your upcoming research.
We accept any article (Research Paper, Review Articles, Short Communications, Case Reports, Mini- Review, Opinions, and Letter to Editors etc.) for publication.
SOJ Psychology (SOJP) requests you, to provide your manuscript on or before March 31th, 2016.
Please submit your manuscript here
Note: If need arises, we will extend the date of submission as per your convenience.
Thank you for your valuable time! Kindly revert to us for your queries.
--
Greetings to the day. Greetings for the day. Gleeful. Broken Englilsh. Hmmm.
After the first one of these, I sent Mark a note, “I’m a big star.” Mark wrote back. “Ha, yes, I got the same thing.” Mark, who has a lot more experience with this than I do, told me that a barrage of complimentary canned e-mails are spit out by robots anytime a peer-reviewed article appears. My star was falling.
I’m still glad a journal as prestigious as JADD ran our piece, and we really do think it was important. But I have to say, how many journals and summits and books are out there, and exactly how hard are they to get into?
Now that I’m “credentialed,” I guess I’ll find out.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
Video interview of Lance Simmons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS-qGKzZ3dw
I tend to hope that HuffPost would be more up front if pulling a story and blocking a writer, so I wonder if we're seeing outside interference with digital systems in this matter, or maybe inside interference not transparent to all inside.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | April 18, 2016 at 01:40 PM
Jenny, I am still trying to wakeup this morning. Vaccines don't contribute to oxygen deficiency in the brain. Vaccine components (mercury, live virus, and more) cause direct damage to mitochondria. Mitochondria are where aerobic metabolism takes place.
I don't know much about gluten, but I try to avoid it when possible. My background is in biochemistry, but I would have to lookup "calcium channel blockers" and "nitric oxide" before trying to comment on their involvement in aerobic metabolism. I should look into autism healing protocols, and try to understand stages of recovery in those very few cases where children have completely outgrown autism.
The brain should be the primary focus of research on autism, not the gut. Innervation of the gut was the beginning of neurological control in coelenterate species. Over evolution control of the gut incorporated increasing modulation from a more centralized site (a primeval brain) that could manage neurological control of heart function, respiration, and movement through water.
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | April 18, 2016 at 06:41 AM
Jenny, That the brain is damaged by vaccine components and other factors was the intent of my post yesterday. Autism is a neurological disorder. But this gets lost in all the discussion of statistics about vaccine injury. I keep pointing out how asphyxia damages the brain, because that's what happened to my first two sons.
Aerobic metabolism takes place in the mitochondria, and mitochondrial function is clearly affected by many drugs. Mitochondria are bacteria-like organelles, thus especially susceptible to damage by antibiotics. Mitochondria in the most metabolically active sites of the brain are most vulnerable to injury from mercury and other vaccine components, as well as alcohol, and other inebriating substances.
The brainstem auditory pathway is visibly most affected. However, brainstem centers for control of heart-rate, breathing, and intestinal peristalsis are clearly even more susceptible to drugs or asphyxia. Opiates are a current focus of public concern, and are notorious for disrupting intestinal movement. Gut problems are caused by brain damaging substances, not the other way around.
As someone trained in science, I have always had problems with writing. I am working hard now to learn to write clearly. Circuits in the brain are most difficult to write about. I will keep trying until the brain (not epidemiology) becomes the focus of autism research.
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | April 18, 2016 at 06:01 AM
So, tracing through all the pathways in this tangled network, what finally gets published and touted as 'settled science', at least in the highly sensitive commercial and political topical areas, is what the government and industry sponsors want published and touted. By contrast, the political hacks who 'rigged' the GOP Colorado primary are rank amateurs compared to those who have been able to convince the public what is 'settled science' in vaccines, wireless radiation, etc. The 'rigging' of the political hacks is crude and obvious, whereas the 'rigging' of the research gatekeepers is sophisticated and almost invisible by comparison. I suspect if one digs deeply enough, one will find in fact that the same underlying forces who drive the 'rigging' of these primaries and other elections are the ones who drive the 'rigging' of what the public perceives as 'settled science' in the mainstream research literature (e.g., the large Fossil energy companies, large Pharma, the large Telcoms, large Agrichemical, etc).
*****************
Not sure about about anyone else here, but none of this is new news to me.
Posted by: Barry | April 17, 2016 at 10:10 PM
Regarding HuffPost...
http://truthbarrier.com/2016/04/17/huffpo-pulls-vaxxed-review-from-veteran-columnist-blocks-his-account-as-vaxxed-fever-spreads/
pulling this post...
https://www.laprogressive.com/children-should-hate-us/
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | April 17, 2016 at 04:15 PM
Paul Champion,
"The articles submitted have under gone a proper peer-review to make sure that are not junk and are up-to quality"
Linda1,
"Approximate number of scientific journals by year: 2002: 100,000.....Six years ago, John Ioannidis, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, found that nearly half of published articles in scientific journals contained findings that were false, in the sense that independent researchers couldn’t replicate them."
I will address all three comments above.
There are certainly many tens of thousands of journals that contain all or mainly technical/biomedical articles. However, all journals are not viewed as equal by the research community, or evaluators of research, or policymakers.
The 'best' journals are accessed by the Science Citation Index (SCI). The SCI accesses somewhat under 9,000 journals
(http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/publist_sciex.pdf).
Medline is another index that accesses mainly the biomedical journals, and overlaps with the SCI in accessing the major biomedical journals. As far as I know, there is no official ranking for Medline journals.
While there are many ways to rank the journals in the SCI, the one most widely used is the Impact Factor. This is roughly the number of citations received by the journal (over a fixed time period) divided by the articles published, or a rough average of the number of citations per article.
The journals with the highest Impact Factor are the most desirable publishing targets by the research community, and are those given the most weight by the policy and evaluation communities. They include such well-known journals as NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, Nature, Science, Cell, etc. These journals tend to be exclusively biomedical, or contain a substantial number of biomedical articles. All other things being equal, the number of citations for an article will be a reflection of the number of researchers in that field. Within that framework, the 'quality' of the article will also determine the number of citations.
There are two major determinants to what gets published in these journals and what gets cited. The first gatekeeper is the research sponsor. The number of researchers in a field (which is roughly the base determinant of the number of people available to cite an article) will be a reflection of the money available for research in that field from (usually) the Federal government or industry. So, we have essentially a 'daisy-chain' effect. The topics the government/industry want funded receive the most citations, the articles tend to be published in the highest Impact Factor journals and are viewed as the most prestigious and credible, and are used as a basis to justify further funding increases in these government and industry-desired areas.
The second gatekeeper is the journal Editor, and the peer-reviewers selected. If the topic of the paper submitted for review has low commercial or political sensitivity (e.g., cosmology, heat capacity of a new material, etc), then probably the best experts in the field will be selected as peer reviewers, and the remainder of the review process will probably be objective. However, if the topic of the paper has high commercial or political sensitivity, then the journal Editor has two options. If he/she believes the paper will advance the agenda of the journal, then he/she will send it to reviewers who, due to their known biases, will provide a positive review. If he/she believes the paper will not advance the agenda of the journal, then the Editor will send it to reviewers who will reject the paper.
There are two components to the 'agenda of the journal'. There is the agenda of the Editor, and the agenda of the journal sponsors, direct or indirect. If the journal is sponsored by a professional society, and the main donors to that society are industrial organizations, then that component of the agenda will be alignment with the interests of the sponsors. Also, most Editors have full time research jobs, where they search for, and receive, funding from government and industry sources. Their agenda would be to not displease their existing or potential sponsors by allowing papers to be published contrary to the interests of their sponsors.
So, tracing through all the pathways in this tangled network, what finally gets published and touted as 'settled science', at least in the highly sensitive commercial and political topical areas, is what the government and industry sponsors want published and touted. By contrast, the political hacks who 'rigged' the GOP Colorado primary are rank amateurs compared to those who have been able to convince the public what is 'settled science' in vaccines, wireless radiation, etc. The 'rigging' of the political hacks is crude and obvious, whereas the 'rigging' of the research gatekeepers is sophisticated and almost invisible by comparison. I suspect if one digs deeply enough, one will find in fact that the same underlying forces who drive the 'rigging' of these primaries and other elections are the ones who drive the 'rigging' of what the public perceives as 'settled science' in the mainstream research literature (e.g., the large Fossil energy companies, large Pharma, the large Telcoms, large Agrichemical, etc).
Finally, in response to Linda1's quote about Ioannidis. He does excellent work, and is highly cited (justifiably), but his focus is mainly on technical problems with reported research (e.g., sample size, statistics, etc). My focus is on the other half of the deficient research equation. I focus on the deliberate suppression of sensitive research at all stages, and on the 'manufactured' research that floods the literature. I believe that component is larger than the technical deficiency component. When both these components are added together, they start to get near 100%, which actually may be not far from the truth for the most sensitive topical areas. Thompson's allegations about the MMR vaccine-autism link cover-up may be far closer to the norm than anyone wants to admit!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | April 17, 2016 at 12:07 PM
The last time I looked at Merck's product documentation for the MMR II it stated that an allergy to neomycin was contraindicated for administration of that vaccine. We have a allergy to penicillin in some members of our family (including my now adult ASD child). Can anyone out there with medical/chemical/whatever knowledge inform me of the extent of the relationship between neomycin and penicillin? Thank you in advance.
Posted by: British Autism Mother | April 17, 2016 at 11:27 AM
Eileen Nicole Simon: Personally, I think what you say makes a lot of sense. I think that vaccines are a contributor to the mechanisms of oxygen deficiency in the brain, the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to say. Oxygen deficiency can be an acute problem, and can be a chronic problem.
For instance, what if gluten smothers cells that it binds to, preventing oxygen usage, among all the other nasty things it does?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352902/
What if vaccines and gluten lead to gut disbiosys where anaerobic bacteria take over the gut and brain, where there should be a plethora of aerobic bacteria?
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/Supplement_1/S6.short
What if antibiotic resistant anaerobic bacteria survive in vaccine vials, only to be shot directly into the blood, and if a person is on gluten they are automatically low oxygen, whereas higher levels of oxygen in the blood would have allowed the body to cope with those invaders in more situations.
What if children with autism that are pale skinned who won't tan aren't just having problems with D3/calcium channel stuff, but also with nitric oxide production from sun exposure: nitric oxide helps with oxygen levels in the body:
http://drmicozzi.com/scientists-uncover-more-benefits-of-sun-exposure
"That’s one reason why doctors give nitroglycerin as a fast, effective treatment for angina pectoris. It releases nitric oxide, which again, dilates the blood vessels that supply the heart. This action supplies more blood and oxygen to the starving heart muscle tissue."
Combine it with low D3 which can have effects on oxygen transport:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/anemia/
And if a micro biome can shift to anaerobic bacteria, can shifts to other bacteria types increase oxygen availability in the gut causing further healing in the gut, and blood, and any tissue the blood touches, including the brain?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252572/
If you stop and think about it, so many autism healing protocols directly or indirectly involve oxygen, the cure leading back to the problem.
Posted by: Jenny | April 17, 2016 at 09:06 AM
“Six years ago, John Ioannidis, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, found that nearly half of published articles in scientific journals contained findings that were false, in the sense that independent researchers couldn’t replicate them. The problem is particularly widespread in medical research, where peer-reviewed articles in medical journals can be crucial in influencing multimillion- and sometimes multibillion-dollar spending decisions. It would be surprising if conflicts of interest did not sometimes compromise editorial neutrality, and in the case of medical research, the sources of bias are obvious. Most medical journals receive half or more of their income from pharmaceutical company advertising and reprint orders, and dozens of others [journals] are owned by companies like Wolters Kluwer, a medical publisher that also provides marketing services to the pharmaceutical industry.” — Helen Epstein, author of “Flu Warning: Beware the Drug Companies”
Posted by: Linda1 | April 17, 2016 at 08:35 AM
Dan, neurology should be next on increasing your understanding of vaccine injury. I have submitted several comments to AoA trying to point this out. My background is in science (PhD in biochemistry). I went to graduate school, back in 1969, to learn about genetic disorders. By the time I finished in 1975, I realized that the brain must be the focus of efforts to understand autism.
Lately I am taking a lot of classes and workshops trying to learn how to write. Please let me know where I become unclear. Autism is a neurological disorder. I believe it should be investigated as a form of encephalopathy first described by Wernicke in 1881, a pattern of symmetric bilateral damage within the brainstem. Brainstem damage during early childhood disrupts maturation of the cerebral cortex, especially the late developing language areas.
Mercury and many other substances affect brainstem centers in a Wernicke-like pattern of damage. Measles virus was long ago found to cause subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis (SSPE), and this pan-encephalitic process appears to begin in the brainstem. Does what I have said here make any sense?
Your research has been more useful than the neurodiversity concept recently put forth by other journalists.
References:
[1] Thomson AD et al. Wernicke's encephalopathy revisited. Alcohol & Alcoholism 2008 Mar-Apr;43(2):174-9.
[2] Thomas M et al. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis with bilateral inferior collicular hyperintensity on magnetic resonance imaging brain. Ann Indian Acad Neurol. 2012 Oct;15(4):329-31.
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | April 17, 2016 at 06:00 AM
Dr. Dan an Dr. Mark! I am looking forward to more information on the subject.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | April 17, 2016 at 01:56 AM
I've been so effectively turned on my head that I tend to give more credentials to those who've lost some or don't seem to have much with the "mainstream:"
Huffington Post having trouble with this post?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lance-simmens/why-our-kids-should-hate_b_9707164.html
https://www.laprogressive.com/children-should-hate-us/
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | April 16, 2016 at 11:37 PM
Dan... Nice you get a photo with your article...
just like the big wheels I see in all the McNewspapers and McMedical Journals that are about "all that is left" of journalism and science.
Posted by: go Trump | April 16, 2016 at 08:09 PM
If you can't link to The guardian in my post below – my bad. So I'll try again.
“How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia
More and more academic papers that are essentially gobbledegook are being written by computer programs – and accepted at conferences”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia
Here's another link but to robotic journalism this time:
Do you know whether this story was written by a human? Computer generated vs. journalistic content
from Science Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140314164137.htm
Yes, its what we have been suspecting. Instead of clinicians studying the scientific literature and making their own minds up – they prefer to let robots instruct them how to think. 90 years on we are now living in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In his novel people, worshipped ''T'' (after henry ford's model T that was taking over America). To-day we are expected not to just approve but to worship and be thankful that ''V'' has delivered us from the evils of nature. When really, our good health to-day, came about through better living condition, sanitation, clean water supply’s, etc. Non of which was installed by learned doctors at all.
PS. Dan. For a credential photo you need a back-drop showing shelves of books. Not your children’s books – as Dr. Seuss may give the wrong (right) impression. If I lived in your part of the country I would happily pop-over and do some credentialed-looking photos. Images matter. Not that you look at all bad – a little subtle emphasis that you have indeed studied the subject helps the undecided who are still sitting on the fence (I was in sales and marketing).
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 06:51 PM
From: A Geo Fautism Quarterly(AGFQ)(2016) A geo fautism, or "non-Earth-fautism", is a neophilosophic study of the spaces in technical communication, especially as expressed neologistically in random, unsolicited comments. Some commenters, such as A.S.P. Burger, or Frank N. Furter, relish the chance to type-pen neo-Joycian word salads & melanges....(don't laugh. it's harder than it looks. Try it and see, if you don't believe me....)....
Posted by: medicinehorse179 | April 16, 2016 at 06:47 PM
One doesn’t even need to “ get the broken English style broken down pat” these days. News science article can be written by robots. For (a simplified example.. read this article _ or rather don't but just look at whom authors are the top to get my point.
http://scigen.csail.mit.edu/cgi-bin/scigen.cgi?seed=613&type=pdf&author=Champion+P&author=Orac&author=Offit+&author=Andoffit&
The Guardian article below tells how it done.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academiahttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academiahttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia
Robot reads the news wire – which the PR agency feeding in - gets the story published. As Dr A.W. said we need to go an the attack now. We need to fight fire with fire. Just my personal view of course. Orac may disagree...
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 05:16 PM
Lol "follow-up towards our previous mail..."
If you responded there's sure to be a cost for whatever it is they're offering.
Posted by: Twyla | April 16, 2016 at 03:16 PM
IF you read many of these science papers you can get the broken English style broken down pat -- so be careful; You are too good of a writer to turn into a science writer. The world would lose much.
There was a brief movement 30 years ago to stop these guys from writing in such a mundane way - but the movement did not last long cause it is jut a really good way to cover up much a do about nothing in most cases, or to hide a horrible study, or to manipulate data.
Posted by: Benedetta | April 16, 2016 at 02:57 PM
To answer “exactly how hard are they to get into?” . These Johnny-come-latelies are all 'Open Access Journals'. In other-words one doesn't pay $39.95 or some other sum to read nor download the articles. Instead they survive via the contributor to pay for the hassle of getting them peer- reviewed and hosted on a online 'only' journal. No printed copy’s of the whole Journal is necessary, because one simply downloads and prints off the PDF. So they can provide the service more cheaply than say Elsevier (who make a indecent profit out of charges to access). Out of the many thousands of 'Open Access Journals' now online, many will accept anything submitted to them, just to have a stock of articles. So, in that respect it is very easy to get one's paper accepted – not hard at all. However, the thing is, academics are very careful to choose only to citate from articles that have been published in Journal that are known to be reliable sources. i.e. The articles submitted have under gone a proper peer-review to make sure that are not junk and are up-to quality – the reviewers often point out weakness to the author so that he can improve any short comings in his submissions.
PloS are very good at this and thus the articles they host get citations in other research paper, but as I mentioned below, PloS is supported by he Alfred P. Sloan Foundation so perhaps not the best choice for subjects covering autism, vaccines and the like. Yet PloS has grown rapidly, because everyone can read the articles for free and so academics who contribute see their profile rise more than if they had gone to say an Elsevier Journal.
In short, there is no point at all, in submitting something to a journal that has no readership nor credibility (other than for vanity) but it is unfortunate not “hard' but easy to get into the wrong ones and they may fail and go out of business.
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 02:11 PM
Dr. Dan:
Dr. Ed just made me laugh so hard that I spit my coffee out.
Well done!
Louis
Posted by: Louis Conte | April 16, 2016 at 11:39 AM
Dear Dan,
You deserve an honorary doctorate, not that a Phd or MD means much these days except for a select few. Maybe we need to come up with a new distinctive honorary degree to award you with - a degree that hasn't been dumbed down to the point where it is meaningless (or menacing).
In answer to your question - how many journals are there? According to the book _The Dream Weaver_ by Jack Bowen:
"Approximate number of scientific journals by year:
2002: 100,000
1950: 13,000
1900: 2,000
1850: 300
1800: 60
1662: 2 (The founding of The Royal Society of Science)"
And who knows if those figures are even close to being accurate. This school book to study philosophy doesn't give a reference.
A philosophy book describing science that doesn't substantiate statements presented as facts.
Posted by: Linda1 | April 16, 2016 at 11:19 AM
Clear and well-said, should be conclusive. Helpful in dealing with the "autism has always been with us" trolls. Thanks!
Not only are you indexed in pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26231203) but I can buy the full article for $39.95 :-) It is "free" on deepdyve service, though, as part of its regular $40/month subscription fee.
Posted by: Tim Lundeen | April 16, 2016 at 11:09 AM
As an aside: The e-mail's Dan got... Just spam! However, if any professional here (or a talented common Joe/Jane who can rustle up something) is thinking they have a quality Review Article worthy of publication but can't find a publisher, then 'Open Access Journals' are a thing to consider. So please note this down now. Although they charge, they sometimes offer waivers on fees (but one has to ask). Normally I would have suggested PloS as the best of the many but one of their patrons are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who also patronise the Tribeca Film Festival. Second best therefore, is the Hindawi Publishing Corporation. They don't seem to have an axe-to-grind and belong to (ALPSP), the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).
They also clearly display their Article Processing Charges for each Journal they publish. Here is just one example:
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijpedi/apc/
One should be able to negotiate a win-win, were the review is free to access -so gets a very wide readership (without any pay-wall getting in the way) but commercial use requires a fee, so the author can hope to claim back some of his expense of having it published (although I admit, that may be one-day, in a universe far – far - away). So, that is just some of my thoughts on finding a publisher that is willing to publish what the BMJ and many other journals would not touch with a barge-pole.
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 10:18 AM
Cheerful greetings, Doctor. Maybe at conference you will have for one another meet Paul Offit, and ideas!
Posted by: Dan Burns | April 16, 2016 at 09:28 AM
Also, what Austin Journal of Autism & Related Disabilities may not have said in their spam email is that they don't belong to any organisation that oversees quality. The just accept your article (after they have had it peer reviewed of course …?!!) then (out of the blue) submit to you their invoice for publishing your opus. Jeffrey Beall runs a blog on these types Predatory Publishers.
https://scholarlyoa.com/about/
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 08:56 AM
Call me a cynic if you wish. These emails seems to be a fishing exercises to find the soft underbelly of ones opponent by offering a juicy worm on the end of a hook.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fishing+expedition
The email header may provide clues to who 'really' sent it. The header does not appear in the email as presented in front of you. However,
http://whatismyipaddress.com/find-headers
tells you how to see it. From there one can find who really sent it and if it was from an agency's ISP rather than from the Neurological Disorders Summit organizers or whom ever themselves.
Posted by: Paul Champion | April 16, 2016 at 08:35 AM
Dear Dr. Olmsted,
I have spent the last 25 years of my life dissecting peer-reviewed articles in reputable medical journals.
Quite often, your columns make more sense than some of those publications.
Keep up the Good Work
Posted by: Ed Yazbak | April 16, 2016 at 08:26 AM