Fortunately, there’s some press about bogus therapies. In an article entitled “‘Cure’ for dyslexia comes under fire.” Paul Heinrichs of The Age (AU) examined the problems with the Dore treatment program that has been poplular in Great Britan. (I expressed reservations about this prollgram exactly one year ago, as available here. I still harbor those concerns.)
The Dore program, which is sold for about $4500 a child through 11 Australian centres, including one in Melbourne, uses simple physical exercises such as throwing a bean bag from hand to hand and standing on a wobbleboard.
Its founder, British millionaire Wynford Dore, claims the program has delivered “breakthrough” results for dyslexia sufferers and assists children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia (poor co-ordination) and Asperger’s syndrome, an autism-like condition.
Much of the renewed emphasis on the Dore program probably comes from the controversial study published recently in an academic journal in GB. I’ve not personally reviewed that study, so I shan’t comment. However, I plan to do so, as I suspect that it will be a good illustration of how mistakes are made either in the peer review process or the representation by the press of a simple academic agreement.
Link for Mr. Heinrichs’ article.
ADHD bologna
Over on I Speak of Dreams, Liz Ditz has a post regarding the untrustworthiness of a Web site on ADHD. Liz refers to a post on Drumsnwhistles that took the Attention Deficit Disorder blog to task for making false statements about research and for pushing remedies of ADHD that have virtually no evidenciary bases. I’m glad to see that folks on the Internet are gazing with a sensibly skeptical eye on some of these merchandizing schemes. Hoooray! There’s entirely too much bologna on the Web, so let’s root it out of the garden and flush it into the compost heap (teehee–making mush with metaphors).
Link to Liz’s post about the site. Here’s a link to the post on Drumsnwhistles to which Liz referred.