http://goo.gl/vlELrV
History is dotted with simultaneous independent discoveries. From the Möbius strip to the electric telegraph, great minds sometimes do think alike. And for decades now, the Asperger-Kanner mind meld has been the accepted wisdom of the discovery of autism.
Steve Silberman, a writer for Wired, had worked on a book about autism for about a year. It was a topic with which he was familiar; he’d written a widely read story in 2001 on the prevalence of the disorder, which is estimated to affect one in 68 children. The new project aimed, in part, to document the history of autism research, and Silberman had a hunch that the conventional wisdom surrounding the allegedly serendipitous discovery of autism by two clinicians working independently was, at best, incomplete.
It’s a famous story, frequently told, including in The Atlantic. As Silberman put it, fourteen years ago: