Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Unique Accomplishment of Laurent Mottron

I have written previously on this blog about the many innovative and original contributions made by Laurent Mottron and the members of his autism research team, but it would appear this time Dr. Mottron has gone and completely outdone himself in the new paper appearing in the journal Nature, Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders (Dalila Pinto, Alistair T. Pagnamenta, Lambertus Klei, Richard Anney, Daniele Merico, Regina Regan, Judith Conroy, Tiago R. Magalhaes, Catarina Correia, Brett S. Abrahams, Joana Almeida, Elena Bacchelli, Gary D. Bader, Anthony J. Bailey, Gillian Baird, Agatino Battaglia, Tom Berney, Nadia Bolshakova, Sven Bolte, Patrick F. Bolton, Thomas Bourgeron, Sean Brennan, Jessica Brian, Susan E. Bryson, Andrew R. Carson, Guillermo Casallo, Jillian Casey, Brian H.Y. Chung, Lynne Cochrane, Christina Corsello, Emily L. Crawford, Andrew Crossett, Cheryl Cytrynbaum, Geraldine Dawson, Maretha de Jonge, Richard Delorme, Irene Drmic, Eftichia Duketis, Frederico Duque, Annette Estes, Penny Farrar, Bridget A. Fernandez, Susan E. Folstein, Eric Fombonne, Christine M. Freitag, John Gilbert, Christopher Gillberg, Joseph T. Glessner, Jeremy Goldberg, Andrew Green, Jonathan Green, Stephen J. Guter, Hakon Hakonarson, Elizabeth A. Heron, Matthew Hill, Richard Holt, Jennifer L. Howe, Gillian Hughes, Vanessa Hus, Roberta Igliozzi, Cecilia Kim, Sabine M. Klauck, Alexander Kolevzon, Olena Korvatska, Vlad Kustanovich, Clara M. Lajonchere, Janine A. Lamb, Magdalena Laskawiec, Marion Leboyer, Ann Le Couteur, Bennett L. Leventhal, Anath C. Lionel, Xiao-Qing Liu, Catherine Lord, Linda Lotspeich, Sabata C. Lund, Elena Maestrini, William Mahoney, Carine Mantoulan, Christian R. Marshall, Helen McConachie, Christopher J. McDougle, Jane McGrath, William M. McMahon, Alison Merikangas, Ohsuke Migita, Nancy J. Minshew, Ghazala K. Mirza, Jeff Munson, Stanley F. Nelson, Carolyn Noakes, Abdul Noor, Gudrun Nygren, Guiomar Oliveira, Katerina Papanikolaou, Jeremy R. Parr, Barbara Parrini, Tara Paton, Andrew Pickles, Marion Pilorge, Joseph Piven, Chris P. Ponting, David J. Posey, Annemarie Poustka, Fritz Poustka, Aparna Prasad, Jiannis Ragoussis, Katy Renshaw, Jessica Rickaby, Wendy Roberts, Kathryn Roeder, Bernadette Roge, Michael L. Rutter, Laura J. Bierut, John P. Rice, Jeff Salt, Katherine Sansom, Daisuke Sato, Ricardo Segurado, Ana F. Sequeira, Lili Senman, Naisha Shah, Val C. Sheffield, Latha Soorya, Ines Sousa, Olaf Stein, Nuala Sykes, Vera Stoppioni, Christina Strawbridge, Raffaella Tancredi, Katherine Tansey, Bhooma Thiruvahindrapduram, Ann P. Thompson, Susanne Thomson, Ana Tryfon, John Tsiantis, Herman Van Engeland, John B. Vincent, Fred Volkmar, Simon Wallace, Kai Wang, Zhouzhi Wang, Thomas H. Wassink, Caleb Webber, Rosanna Weksberg, Kirsty Wing, Kerstin Wittemeyer, Shawn Wood, Jing Wu, Brian L. Yaspan, Danielle Zurawiecki, Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, Joseph D. Buxbaum, Rita M. Cantor, Edwin H. Cook, Hilary Coon, Michael L. Cuccaro, Bernie Devlin, Sean Ennis, Louise Gallagher, Daniel H. Geschwind, Michael Gill, Jonathan L. Haines, Joachim Hallmayer, Judith Miller, Anthony P. Monaco, John I. Nurnberger Jr, Andrew D. Paterson, Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Peter Szatmari, Astrid M. Vicente, Veronica J. Vieland, Ellen M. Wijsman, Stephen W. Scherer, James S. Sutcliffe and Catalina Betancur, 2010).

There you can see it for yourself, in plain black and white, defying what must have been nearly insurmountable odds—Laurent Mottron has somehow managed to get himself not included in the list of contributing authors. What else can I say—this is clearly a unique accomplishment within the current field of autism research.

Indeed, Dr. Mottron's feat is so unusual and amazing that it leaves me wondering how he possibly could have pulled it off. My suspicion is that Geraldine Dawson, panicked at the thought of perhaps being excluded from the authorship list (which would itself be a unique and amazing event), during her mad, entreating rush to track down the head author must have knocked Dr. Mottron over and rendered him totally unconscious for a considerable period of time, thus leading to his name not appearing on the roll. But little matter. In an accomplishment like this—where one has so definitively set himself apart from all his peers—the means are merely a secondary consideration, the accomplishment is the thing. My heartiest congratulations!

6 comments:

jonathan said...

Maybe it's just that autism scientists who are sane and who want to cure this horrible disability are finally coming to their senses and are not including someone who claims that my disability which prevents me from having a girlfriend or making a living or accomplishing much or prevents me from being able to handwrite and impairs my ability to relate to people and others who have lost their lives due to accidental drownings, etc. is harmless or that it is not a disorder but just a difference. Perhaps that is the explanation and not your explanation.

Hopefully next on the list is autism speaks terminating his funding let alone giving him half a million dollars

Alan Griswold said...

Ah, that must be it. As usual, Jonathan has thought it through carefully and gone right to the heart of the matter. An intellect like his is truly a thing to behold.

Alexander Cheezem said...

Genetic studies of this sort inevitably have hideously long author's lists. It's a consequence of the way they're done -- lots of highly qualified people are needed for this sort of research.

Alan Griswold said...

"lots of highly qualified people are needed for this sort of research"

How convenient.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your observations Alan. I will have a look on the paper you have linked hoping my second language is good enough to understand it!
I am trying to have a wide picture on autism research since I am the mother of a super cool little boy diagnosed less than two years ago with ASD. We are very proud of him because he seems to be enjoying life and developing many interests. I rekon his potential flaws might be as painfull for him than those of any other person in or out of the spectrum...
Therefore I believe Dr.Mottron's line of reserach is brave and innovative.

All the best,
maycapurro@live.com

Anonymous said...

Well written - well done -- dopuble-plus gold stars all round for all involved in its production!!!