Talk:Violence and autism

Page created by translation

Shellypls (talk) 01:25, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Title thoughts

The title of this article, "Violent behavior in autistic people" seems not to match the content. The article describes violence within the scope of autistic people's lives, both received and expressed, but the title does not reflect that, and suggests the topic may be only about violence expressed by autistic people. Some suggestions:

• Perhaps a more direct translation from the French title such as "Violence in autism" would be more appropriate.
• Alternatively "Violence and autism" is a simple title that gets the point across in English language
• Something like "Violent behavior and autistic people" is similar to the current title.

—siroχo 08:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that these 3 titles would be better. I would lean more towards the second as it is shorter and more general, thus better reflects the content of the article. I will already move the article, but I would also be fine with any of the other two suggestions you made in case there is a consensus for another of the titles 7804j (talk) 13:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Topic & Structure

Hi @Shellypls:, aside from the title I struggle to understand the purpose and structure of the article. It seems that the article covers everything that is loosely related to "violence" and "autism". From my point of view, the article attempts to combine at least four distinct topics (public perception of autism, autistic criminals and whether autistic people are more likely to commit violent crimes, non-criminal violent behavior of autistic people such as self-harm or during meltdowns, and violence against autistic people) that don't have much in common. In my opinion, this is also evident from the "Consequences" section, which fails to draw a coherent conclusion from the preceding sections - arguably, because no such coherent conclusion exists in the first place.

Could you elaborate why you chose to create an article on this topic and combine these vastly different aspects into one Wikipedia article? How do you feel about separating the different parts of your article?--TempusTacet (talk) 20:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestion. However, it wasn't my work, I just translated it from the original article in French (Violence dans l'autisme"). I can change the title for another that fits better. I cannot separate the parts of the article, because I said before, it's not my own work. I hope you can reply to me. Shellypls (talk) 23:31, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I also want to add that the original article has a "good article" badge. Apart from that, I've addressed the orphan tag. Shellypls (talk) 23:33, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Shellypls, I've looked at the "good article" discussions on the French Wikipedia where the very same concerns were raised (much more elaborately than I can phrase them) and have now added a WP:SYNTH violation warning to the article as the article in its current state creates/suggests connections that are not backed by any literature. This is already evident from the fact that the article never defines the term "violence" and uses it in various different meanings throughout the text without distinguishing them. If the issues cannot be resolved (both the French Wikipedia community & I have made suggestions how this could be accomplished) I will go ahead and propose deletion of this article.--TempusTacet (talk) 10:33, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @TempusTacet,

I reviewed the talk page and the 2017 "Featured article" submission ("Article de Qualité" is equivalent to "Featured" in EN Wikipedia, so higher than Good). While I do agree that some of the suggestions brought there could improve the article, the overall consensus was overwhelmingly favorable to the submission. And reading the article as it stands, I find that the links between "violence" (in the broad sense of the term) are documented by the many sources of the page.

Since these discussions in 2017, the article has changed quite a bit, but nobody so far in the French talk page challenged whether this article should exist or not. There was another proposal in the French talk page to rename the article to "Controversy on the link between violence and autism" as well as adjusting one sentence in the article (without anyone even suggesting that the article should be deleted). But then nobody proceeded with making this change in the last 6 years, or with replying to the last comment from @Tsaag Valren.

Rather than submitting for deletion, I would encourage you to make changes to the article or title that you think would help address the issues you raised (since I see you are a member of the autism project -- your knowledge of the topic is likely much better than @Shellypls as she was only translating it). I would oppose a deletion, as I think this is a very important, well sourced and easy-to-read article despite some imperfections, which other editors could address over time.

(On a side note, I think the "Paid contribution" tag should not be there. Our team has no link at all to the topic or the original author -- we translate all featured and good articles into English independently from the topic, and these financial compensation of our translators are properly and fully transparently disclosed)

7804j (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

@7804j Thanks for your long response. I've never come across the OKA before. Do I understand correctly that you are the person that paid Shellypls to translate the article? And do I understand correctly that Shellypls does not have sufficient expertise in autism? Did she review all the sources to ensure that they are accurately cited?

Salvaging this article would, as I sketched above, involve separating it into four distinct articles (to resolve the major WP:SYNTH issue) and then checking and revising these four texts, including resolution of numerous WP:SYNTH violations, a check of each reference and research into whether more up-to-date information exists. This is not work that I'm willing to perform. On the one hand, because it would be much easier to write articles on the different topics from scratch instead of trying to fix the current text. On the other hand, because you apparently paid someone to translate this article without any editorial checks and now are not willing to work on it further, even though it violates Wikipedia's standards. (And to be clear: I don't care about the French Wikipedia nor do I know anything about their editorial standards.)

Hence, I would like to challenge you to produce at least one reputable source (i.e., a book or a scientific review that have seen sufficient reception) where the topic of "violence and autism" is covered in approximately the same way as it is here. Specifically, a source that jointly covers the four distinct topics I named within one cohesive text, with a joint introduction and a joint conclusion (as opposed to e.g. a collection of separate papers/texts covering distinct topics of autism published as a reader).--TempusTacet (talk) 20:21, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @TempusTacet,

OKA works a bit differently from what you mentioned. We provide monthly stipends for translators to work on Wikipedia, but we do not instruct them to translate specific pages. They have a lot of freedom on what and how they want to work, though we provide them with a list of pages that can be translated (based on scripts that automatically look for articles across a wide range of categories). We follow the attribution requirements from Wikipedia for our translations, and we do editorial checks but for sure our translators are not content experts since they cover a wide variety of topics. We also fix any translation issues when they are flagged, so we do work on it further but would not be able to do a full overhaul of the content. If you'd like to learn more about our process, you can check our website and our workflow, or also happy to discuss via my Talk page. But I don't think this is relevant in the context of this article, as the concerns you raised are not about the quality of the translation but about the content itself.

Regarding WP:Synth, the key point for me is "If one reliable source says A and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C not mentioned by either of the sources". I don't think that this article does that. Instead, the article says "Violence has many different facets", and then lists out the various dimensions of it in the context of autism without really introducing new conclusions. This is similar to how an article about, for example, a city, could have a section that describes growing demographics, another section describing growing economics, and a third section describing its well ranked universities, and then have a lead section stating that "The city has strong economics, supported by a growing population and several prolific universities" (which wouldn't be WP:Synth, even if single publication covers all 3 aspects together).

However, I may have missed some parts of the article. Could you provide an example of a statement/sentence in the current article where sources say A/B and we then conclude C without any source saying C? Perhaps the easiest solution is just to reword or remove such statements.

7804j (talk) 10:06, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

As I see it, the entire article is a WP:SYNTH violation. It combines different topics in a novel way and constructs a relationship between them. So far you have failed to produce a reputable source that connects these topics in the same way this article does. To my knowledge, no such source exists. Hence, you can write separate articles on the individual aspects of violence (where a great deal of literature exists, only a fraction of which is cited in the article) but you cannot create a joint article that implies connections between these aspects.

Under WP:SYNTH it is most definitely not OK to say "The city has strong economics, supported by a growing population and several prolific universities" if there is no source that makes that connection. All you could say is "The city has strong economics. Its population is growing. It is home to prolific universities." Particularly in the case of topics like criminal justice, medicine, and psychology where there is a lot of media controversy, public opinion, and pop-science (as well as financial incentives) it is paramount to use reputable source and be very careful. The section Violence_and_autism#Social_perception even describes this.

I believe that it is extremely relevant that you have a financial interest in the existence of this article (which you have tried to hide without disclosing your conflict of interest) and feel that it is OK to add articles to Wikipedia without having the expertise to "do a full overhaul of the content", which automatically disqualifies you from being able to appropriately judge the quality and correctness of content that you are adding. Did you or your contractor consult all of the literature that is used as references? I'm also concerned that you're immediately trying to discuss about rules or pointing to discussions or a lack of action on the French Wikipedia instead of defending the article that your contractor has created. So far, I don't get the impression that you care about the quality or accuracy of the content.--TempusTacet (talk) 11:24, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

And please take a look at Wikipedia:Buy one, get one free to better understand my point of view.--TempusTacet (talk) 11:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Shellypls Could you please join the discussion and respond to the questions regarding which measures you took to verify the accuracy of the article's content and ensure that there are no violations of Wikipedia's editorial policies? Thanks.--TempusTacet (talk) 12:42, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Shellypls and @7804j, as I would like to move forward here, would you please answer the remaining questions? I see that you're active working on other articles.--TempusTacet (talk) 08:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @TempusTacet,

WP:SYNTH, like most Wikipedia policies, require a certain degree of interpretation which means personal judgement on the side of editors. It seems like your interpretation of that policy is stricter than mine or than that of some other editors. I do not have sufficient experience with these types of policy discussions, so I would rather abstain from debating whether or not this article meets the criteria for WP:SYNTH. Having read the article several times, I do not think that it is a WP:SYNTH violation as I think that each aspect is well sourced and that there are no paragraphs that draw conclusions that would be original research, but I would rather leave this question to the community.

So if you believe that this article should not exist, you can submit an AfD request.

That being said, I need to clarify a few points on which I disagree with you:

- I do not have a financial interest in the existence of this article. I do not receive any compensation from anyone from my work. In fact, I donate every year >30k USD of my own income to fund OKA, so that translators can create new Wikipedia pages. Our translators work on pages in every theme, without discrimination. We are not affiliated with any particular cause. This is also completely unrelated to my regular full-time job, so there is no conflict of interest here.

- I did not try to hide my affiliation to OKA. It is very visible in my user page, and in the comments I post. But I do not mention my affiliation to OKA for every single page edit I do, as this would be excessive disclosure. In this specific instance, it is not important to me whether the article has a "Contains paid contributions" tag or not -- I just thought it would be better to remove it because I think this tag is being misused, as it is meant for situations where a conflict of interest exists (which is not the case here). But if you would rather leave the tag, that is fine by me.

- This is a translation, not a newly created page. This is why, when Shellypls created the page, she added the attribution tag to the French Wikipedia page, as is recommended by the enwiki policy on how to attribute translations. Like for the bibliography of many other Wikipedia articles, a lot of the bibliographic resources and academic papers are behind paywalls and journal subscriptions, so it is not easy for our translators to access these. The best positioned person to answer any of your questions would be the primary author of the French article (who is also fluent in English), @Tsaag Valren

7804j (talk) 11:46, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The issue is not that individual statements or sections are unsourced but that the article combines these statements and sections in a novel way, implying connections and relationships that are not backed by any reputable literature.

Thank you for confirming that you did not verify the content of the article. How can you be sure that the article is correct if neither you nor your translator have checked the sources? How can you write or translate articles on a subject without being familiar with the literature?

I have to say that I'm very concerned that you don't see it as your responsibility to ensure the integrity of the content that OKA adds to Wikipedia. (You might want to read Help:Translation#English_Wikipedia_policy_requirements.)--TempusTacet (talk) 11:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I largely agree with tt's comments above :the article's topic and structure are likely unsuitable for Wikipedia. I don't know if anything is salvageable but it may not continue to exist in its present form. (t · c) buidhe 19:53, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll point out that, according to the interlanguage links in the toolbox, WP:MEDRS doesn't seem to exist on the French Wikipedia, so I'd be quite wary of any translation of a medical article going from there to here, much less one of this nature. On a very quick glance, and also based on a fruitless search for secondary reviews in PUBMED, I suspect the entire article is likely SYNTH, but the next task is for someone to go through and flag all the primary sources (time-consuming). I usually start by adding type= Review on any cite journal source flagged in PubMed as a review, and by adding {{primary source-inline}} inside the ref tags on primary sources, which makes it easier to stand back and look at sourcing quality overall and then decide what to search for a review on, versus identifying content that is a candidate for removal if secondary sourcing can't be found. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

7804j, if your translators aren't accessing the sources, they shouldn't be translating. Period. Much less in the medial realm, which is utterly irresponsible. If you are telling us that translators took content from a non-reliable source (a Wiki) and put it on en.wiki without accessing sources, that is completely irresponsible. WP:MEDRS is a guideline on en.wiki that may not exist on the French Wikipedia, so if you have any say in the matter, please make sure no further medical content is carried from there to here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:02, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Further, the article is replete with harv ref errors, because the original sources were not carried over from the French article, so we have incomplete and broken citations throughout. You can install User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js for a visual of how badly this article is failing WP:V, as we don't know what the sources are or where to find them. Some examples:

• Michaud & Aynesworth 1999, p. 13. What is that? Where do we find it? And see WP:MEDDATE ... 1999 ??

And so it goes, throughout. Please don't visit this kind of debacle on en.Wikipedia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

See the AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Violence and autism (t · c) buidhe 01:23, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

This is a hunk of junk, WP:ATD and WP:TNT apply. I've cleaned it up best I can, such that I'm less concerned with deletion than that the people responsible for putting this on en.Wikipedia don't ever do the same thing again. @Shellypls and 7804j: please stay out of the medical realm when translating, and please familiarize yourselves with WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS and WP:SYNTH. Saying you aren't responsible because you only translated is bogus; you should be able to tell when you're translating junk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:15, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I really don't understand this article should be regarded as an original synthesis. Sources showed that it is not possible to separate the violence received from the violence expressed. This is particularly true of War on autism : https://books.google.fr/books?id=JNQlDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, which you can consult in part on Google Books to check.

Secondly, to link this article solely to the medical field is very strange. The main focus of the sources is disability studies, not medical. Tsaag Valren (talk) 11:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Claims About Reduced Empathy

A lot of the phrasing in this article is based around the idea of autistic people having less empathy. However, the Double empathy problem article would suggest this not to be the case, and it might be worth seeking out other sources on this that don't assume the "weak theory of mind/empathy" theories of autism a-priori.

This article also mixes up violence against autistic people with the perception of autistic people committing violence/being violent. Naturally, my comment applies primarily to the second one, even if the first component is related to the second component.

Full disclaimer, I'm autistic :)

31.112.40.23 (talk) 10:38, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

McGuire

There are two different McGuire sources; sorting them might require going back to the French article from whence this mess came. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:06, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Mangling of citations now fixed, by resorting back to the French article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

"Autistic people" vs. "People with autism"

At present, this article uses both people-first (i.e., people with autism) and identity-first (i.e., autistic people) language. For consistency, it's best to choose one or the other.

According to various style guides, people-first language is appropriate for referring to people with disabilities, though I'm having trouble finding Wikipedia's style guide on this topic at the moment. However, various communities have indicated they prefer identity-first language, including the autistic community (Taboas et al., 2022; Monk et al. 2022), though this may vary by culture (Buijsman et al., 2022).

Whatever is selected, it should be consistent throughout the article. Significa liberdade (talk) 15:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

In this article, I have no opinion on and don't engage that topic; none of my choices are intentional, and I typically just leave whatever is there.

The guideline you are after is at WP:SUFFER: please note that section of a guideline is suggestions only, and that language preference varies by condition. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Identity first is preferred in the Autistic community. Tydoni (talk) 21:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Attribution

Significa liberdade in this edit you have removed the attribution of a direct quote. (According to Anne-Sophie Ferry, "autism is not characterized by violence or outbursts of anger",) We need to either attribute the quote, or rephrase the entire thing, and since I don't have access to the source, I don't know how to rephrase it better ... so for now, it's an opinion that should be attributed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

PS, thanks for the much better rephrasing of the other instances of overquoting :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I re-added the attribution to Anne-Sophie Ferry. I got caught up in the overuse of "According to .." when the source is cited. Though this is common practice in academia, it can make reading more difficult outside of academia.

Re:rephrasing quotes -- some of the "quotes" are from French articles, so they're not even real quotes. There are issues with translating direct quotations because slight word changes might result in changing the meaning. As such, it's really best to paraphrase.

Significa liberdade (talk) 15:44, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Nice work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Inappropriate Picture

Can we please remove the picture of the minor having a meltdown? Autistic people consider it rude to post pictures or videos of people in meltdown. Meltdown pictures/videos are usually not taken with the consent of the subject. Meltdowns are something many Autistic people find humiliating. Parents that want to cure Autism and organizations like Autism Speaks have a history of posting meltdown pictures/videos to shame the subject or demonize Autistic people in general. As an Autistic person I ask Wikipedia to please refrain from showing pictures of distressed Autistic people without proof that the subject consented to having that photo used in that manner. The fact that picture is that of a minor makes the posting of this picture even more inappropriate in my opinion. Tydoni (talk) 21:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Non-Verbal vs. Non-Vocal

I have heard that Autistic people that are unable to speak prefer non-vocal to non-verbal. IIRC the issue was that using non-verbal perpetrated the myth that non-speaking Autistic people have intellectual disabilities and increased the discrimination non-speaking Autistic people face. As I am usually able to speak, I cannot say one way or the other which term is appropriate. Could a non-speaking Autistic person weigh in on this? Tydoni (talk) 21:59, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Violence expressed by autistic people

Could we please change the title of this section to Distress Mischaracterized as Violence? Nothing about this section reference’s actual violence. This section appears to be about behaviour of people in distress being mistaken for violence. This includes the institutionalized Autistic people spitting or biting. In my understanding most, if not all, of the spitting and biting in that situation is people trying to communicate they are in distress or communicate that they want you to ‘go away’ the only way they know how. We do not call someone who needs to be rescued by a lifeguard violent if they say accidentally slap the lifeguard rescuing them while they are in a panic and flailing around trying to not drown. Most Autistic people in distress (especially if it’s sensory overload) are the same state of mind as someone that feels their life is in danger (flight/fight/freeze/fawn mode). This article doesn’t do a good job of differentiating distress behaviour and mischievous/malicious behaviour committed by people who cannot be held criminally responsible. Distress Behaviour and behaviour with a mischievous/malicious motive are two very different issues that require two very different solutions. We also need to discuss how Allistic people can’t always tell the difference between distress behaviour and malicious behaviour and how that causes major problems for Autistic people. Tydoni (talk) 22:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Abuse in school

There are lots of reports of violence against autistic children in school I think this should be on the article somewhere. here are some links to reports of this.

https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/mom-fears-her-autistic-son-being-abused

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/lawsuit-alleges-abuse-of-student-with-autism-baltimore/41138598# Snowman680 (talk) 15:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snowman680 That's interesting, I think maybe that should go in another article as this one is about the stereotype of autistic people being violent, rather than violence against autistic people. —Panamitsu (talk) 22:28, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I've just had a look on Google Scholar and "violence against autistic people" returns half a dozen pages so I'll start a draft on it, and then we can see if it warrants its own page or should be merged into this one. —Panamitsu (talk) 00:46, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I would like to help you on that draft article if you could post a link to it. Snowman680 (talk) 19:49, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snowman680 I haven't yet started it, I'll get onto it in a few days, I'm busy with other things for a while. —Panamitsu (talk) 21:33, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Its been over a week I just want to make sure you haven't forgotten about the draft. Snowman680 (talk) 22:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Questionable quotation

The article quotes a woman called Anne-Sophie Ferry, though as far as I can tell she is a mother of an autistic child who wrote a book about her experience, and therefore isn't an academic source.

Another thing: I had to remove some sentences that questioned the diagnosis of two officially diagnosed mass murderers ("sometimes considered autistic"), and had to remove a sentence that was the editor's opinion on whether Jeffrey Dahmer had autism or not ("despite not showing signs of the syndrome").

The entire article needs some work to improve, I think. It's a sensitive topic and naturally it's going to bring some strong feelings. Hipotecas (talk) 07:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)