Dore – the vultures start to circle
Posted by gimpy on May 27, 2008
Normally when a business collapses it is common to see other businesses circling hungrily, eyeing up assets and soliciting customers. The dyslexia industry, for all its claims just to be helping people, is no different from any other business. It has been brought to my attention that The Learning People, subject of one of my very first blog posts, have started wooing former clients of Dore and spamming blogs covering the Dore collapse. While The Learning People may be cheaper than Dore and has had similar amounts of media exposure and celebrity endorsements it also has just as much scientific evidence supporting it. Practically none.
I will keep this simple. There is no cure for dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities. There are only coping strategies which may lead to an improvement over time. If anybody claims they have a cure, whether standing on a wobbly board throwing beanbags or making letters out of plasticine, they are lying, perhaps to themselves as much as patients but they are still lying. If these people charge money for their lies then they are seeking to profit from the disabled. Do not be fooled by them. They may think they are helping, they may have other motivations than profit, but they need profit to survive. They will not pay for research that may question their treatment because that would affect profit. They are business men and women. They will exploit you for their bottom line.
Even though there is no cure for dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities that does not mean you should give up hope for you or for your child. Support them by giving them the extra help they may need, consult with your Educational Psychologist, lobby their teacher for extra help but above all do not think that their problems will hold them back in life without a cure. There are many people, myself included, who have managed just fine despite specific learning disabilities. They are no barrier to success.
Do not let the vultures with their fake cures take your money. Coping with a disability should not be an area of life exploited by commercial interests. It should be an area where the education system supports those who need extra help. If you feel the education system isn’t helping enough then you should contact teachers, schools, MPs, charities, universities and researchers. Not private businesses.
Here are some links to get you started, if you have others leave them in the comments and I will add them.
thanks to duck
Chris Tregenza said
There is no cure for dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities. There are only coping strategies …
I take issue with this.
Its nothing to do with the Dore or a specific treatment, more the logic of your statement.
It is true to say there is not a scientific proven ‘cure’ that is recognized by a large number of people.
But this neither means that a cure doesn’t currently exist (but not proven) or that a cure cannot exist (but we haven’t found it).
It also assumes that all the underlying problem in all dyslexics is the same in all people. This is neither proven or even likely given the complexity of the human brain (e.g. dyslexia like symptoms can appear in people with brain injuries).
Stating it is incurable flies in the face of modern neurological understanding. The brain is not static, it changes constantly through our lives. We call this learning and experience.
Assuming dyslexia has one or more neurological causes (with the exception of actual brain damage) there is no reason to believe that the effect areas of the brain cannot be trained to normal behaviour patterns. Obviously the older the subject is, the harder the retraining is to do.
To put down any improvement in a dyslexic’s abilities as Coping Stratergies is patronising.
Yes, dyslexics learn coping strategies. One of mine was to drop out school at 16 and find work that didn’t require me to have good spelling or handwriting. That is a coping strategy.
A dyslexic learning to spell is not a coping strategy. It is a genuine improvement in their condition.
Failing to differentiate between a coping strategy and genuine improvement is bad for dyslexics. Teachers should work hard to spot coping strategies as these may be disguising the severity of a child’s problem.
Conflating coping strategies with real improvements belittles the successes of those genuinely improving and increases the chance that children with effective coping strategies will miss out on the help they need.
Chris
gimpy said
Chris, I cannot accept anything other than published scientific evidence as a minimum standard for any talk of cures. Anecdotes, while useful starting points, are subject to many different biases and misinterpretations as this excellent article discusses.
In the published scientific literature there exists no claim of cure for dyslexia, just criticism of purported non-scientific cures. I am not disputing that coping strategies may give the impression of cure as they allow people to overcome some of the outward symptoms but the very minimum that would be required to suggest the possibility of cure would be for somebodies psychological assessment to fall within normal parameters following treatment compared to before. This would have to be part of a trial with a placebo group and enough participants to ensure statistical significance.
No trial has achieved this which makes any claim of cure invalid. Of course I am not excluding the possibility of a cure but given the nature of the cells, particularly the lack of cell division in many cell types, within the brain I find it difficult to see any indication that brain structure can be altered, at least post development.
brainduck said
Gimpy, I’d add to this: ‘the very minimum that would be required to suggest the possibility of cure would be for somebodies psychological assessment to fall within normal parameters following treatment compared to before.’ that it really depends on what tests you are using. Normal IQ tests & bog-standard psych screening isn’t always going to pick stuff up.
I’ve argued about the precise definition of ‘cure’ quite a bit on various blogs & stuff.
I had a similar discussion on Dore Talk only yesterday, particularly concerning my dissertation work (carried out on very high-functioning dyslexics).
‘The thing I’m finding really interesting about my current study is that it shows that people who are very, very high-functioning, getting a First in English and so on, completely ‘well’ by the broadest possible WHO definition of health, still have hidden difficulties if you know where to look for them. I’m coming up with statistically significant differences between the groups on tasks like non-word phoneme deletion (’take the /k/ from ’skwem’, what word do you get’). This is true even for dyslexics who’ve done explicit phonological awareness training, though less so – if I had more people I’d do a sub-group analysis but basically I’m seeing three clusters on that test, non-dyslexics, phonological-awareness-trained dyslexics, and dyslexics who’ve not had explict phonics-based instruction. The groups are matched pairwise for age, gender, and education, so these are dyslexics who are doing just as well as the non-dyslexics but they still show up as different on some very specific tests. You could definitely consider most of them ‘cured+++’ for everyday purposes, but they still show up as subtly different if you really know where to look.’
http://dore.co.uk/doretalk/forums/t/769.aspxmore on this thread
Thing is, I would regard someone who’s getting a First in English as being ‘cured’ in the everyday sense of the word – not that they are no longer dyslexic, but that it has ceased to be something that holds them back in life. I imagine most parents would regard that as pretty good evidence that their child was ‘cured’, even if I can still tell the difference when I make them do silly things. The *effects* of dyslexia are ‘curable’, at least for some people – and they are definitely improve-able for just about everyone.
Anyway, links I’d add ‘cos I know about them well:
Dyslexia Action (yes, I know Dore clients have been told to regard them as a Bad Thing, but it’s *not* all phonics, not that there’s anything wrong with phonics…).
Working Memory - using this as a treatment is still a fairly new thing, and I’d be cautious about making any great claims for it ’till 5-10 years down the line, but it’s an interesting area & the site has a lot on the research background.
A few more that I know less well, but I’ve been pointing people towards if they have questions as a result of my study, & I have generally found them useful & reliable:
Dyspraxia Foundation
ADDISS AD(H)D
National Autistic Society
Research Autism
I’d also suggest that people consider the concept of Neurodiversity, Wikipedia is generally a good place to start looking.
According to some definitions I’m ‘cured’, I don’t regard my dyspraxic impairments as any longer being a handicap (social model of disability), I might still struggle with tying my shoelaces but I do better than most of the population at running marathons once they’re on, so I’m less handicapped by dyspraxic-ness than they are by couch-potato-ness. I don’t want to be made ‘less dyspraxic’, some of the time it’s a PITA, but I’ve also learnt how to use it to my advantage, & it’s part of who I am. I see my mind as being a bit like running a Linux computer in a Windows world – sure, it’s a bit harder to learn to use, some versions crash more than you’d like, and I will always be the one having to adapt to other people’s way of doing things. But it also lets me do & see things that other people never even realise they are missing.
I’ve talked to quite a lot of parents with newly diagnosed children, and they talk about things they think their children will be missing. They say that their child will never be an astronaut or Prime Minister or even just grow up to be happy. Well, I live with a dyspraxic Quantum Physicist, I know a dyslexic & dyspraxic medical doctor, in my family there’s a dyslexic forensic toxicologist, dyspraxic engineer, Asperger’s maths student… some things might be different from what you expected, but different doesn’t have to mean worse. Read Don’t Mourn For Us, meet some adults with SpLDs, and learn everything you can. Above all, don’t stop hoping & dreaming.
brainduck said
sorry for mangling the links, dissertation-itis!
Chris Tregenza said
On a completely different subject…
The Learning Breakthrough people are spamming like mad. I’ve noticed four different posts on the Dore Talk (user: Mary S) about it and I’ve had very similar comments on Myomancy which I’ve deleted.
Regardless of who they are, any company spamming deserves to be vilified. If there is anyone operating the Dore Talk forum still, its probably worth suggesting that they delete those posts and ban that member.
gimpy said
Chris, other bloggers have been spammed with this shameless solicitation too. I view this as an unfortunate consequence of running healthcare as a business.
Richard Whitehead said
Dear Chris,
I’ve just read your posts and am concerned by what you say. We have not been engaging in any “spamming” around the Dore collapse. Chris, I’ve been to the doretalk blog and couldn’t find the posts by “Mary S” you refer to. Can you help me out and give me a more specific pointing or copy an example to this post?
We don’t have anyone by that name in The Learning People. Did you say the person in question was referring to the “Learning Breakthrough” people? We have never gone by that name.
Gimpy, we have indeed set up a support section on our blog for Dore clients, which links across to your own blog because of the wealth of practical information you are offering on the Dore collapse.
Best wishes,
Richard Whitehead
Director
The Learning People
Richard Whitehead said
Gimpy, having looked more closely at your post, I need to take issue with your suggestion that we claim to cure dyslexia. The Dore Programme did – we never have done.
Best wishes,
Richard Whitehead
Director
The Learning People
Richard Whitehead said
Chris, I’ve just found Mary S’s comments. She is indeed from Learning Breakthrough and has nothing to do with our organisation.
I know you weren’t implying that she was – but Gimpy’s claim that we have been “spamming blogs” suggests that he may have confused us with them.
Best wishes,
Richard
Gazza said
I have to say I am getting sick and tired of negative comments regarding the Dore programme. Bottom line is that it has been working for my daughter. Yes there are other programmes out there which may also work but this was working for her and I, like many others, are disappointed and saddened by the sudden closure.
There are many ways to bake a cake and this was one of them, which I happened to choose and was very happy with my decision.
More Dore media coverage: Bad Science and the Sun. « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science said
[...] cure”. He has also doggedly covered the scientific evidence, and is now blogging on other dyslexia “cures” that have started to circle like vultures, buying the word “Dore” on Google [...]
Sue said
Must take issue with a couple of comments Gimpy made.
“There is no cure for dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities….”
That would depend on what was causing them.
And “In the published scientific literature there exists no claim of cure for dyslexia, just criticism of purported non-scientific cures.”
Would like to point out that absence of evidence in the literature doesn’t mean the evidence doesn’t exist.
Dyslexia is not a unitary learning disability, it’s a label for a bunch of different disabilities, all of which cause difficulties with reading. Reading is a cognitively complex task therefore any significant impairment in any of the sub-tasks involved in reading will lead to a label of dyslexia. Problems can arise with a range of auditory, visual or vestibular processes, and because the Dore (or Learning Breakthrough or occupational therapy – they are all based on the same theory) exercises rehearse ocular-motor and vestibular function, this means that it’s quite possible for them to be effective in people whose dyslexia is caused by problems with these factors. The interventions may be completely ineffective in other people where different factors are involved.
The reason why there are no ‘cures’ for dyslexia reported in the literature is because currently, most people diagnosed with dyslexia are all lumped together as one, regardless of the specific cause of the dyslexia, so research findings are frequently inconclusive. The outcomes of therapies are variable for the same reason.
We need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Ocular-motor and vestibular function plays an important and under-researched role in dyslexia. Even if Dore were utterly reprehensible in the way they carried out their business, and utterly wrong in their theory, that doesn’t mean that their method has not worked in some cases.
storm said
Richard Whitehead how do i contact you direct would really like to ask you a few questions regarding the programme and northern ireland?