The Rosie Result (Don Tillman, #3)

by Graeme Simsion

“I’m a crap physician but a good researcher. Why waste time on stuff I’m not good at?”

I turned towards her, in accordance with the convention that people look at each other while conversing.

In the adult world, an uneven distribution of abilities is more valuable than mediocrity at everything. It is irrelevant to me whether or not my doctor is adept at hitting a ball with a stick—or finding her way to work without looking at street signs—but I would like her to be as proficient as possible in the practice of medicine. Conversely, at school, being other than unobtrusively average in every area (with the exception of sports) is a distinct disadvantage.

My initial feeling was of relief. If I did obtain a diagnosis, I would have a simple explanation to give to people like Lucy. But within minutes of terminating the call, I began to feel uncomfortable.

psychiatrist had argued, after one of our lunch companions had made that suggestion, that I would not qualify for a diagnosis: my personality did not cause me to suffer socially or professionally.

I was not prepared to accept that I could acquire a syndrome without any change to myself.

everyone’s brain configuration is a combination of genetic and environmental factors. We only give names to variations that are easily described and relatively common.

She had delivered good news, then Neil had interrupted with bad news, and now she would need to deliver two pieces of good news to complete the first bad-news sandwich and begin the second, before she could deliver her own bad news. She seemed to be struggling to think of sufficient good news, as I frequently did when applying the formula, and moved directly to the bad news.

Does he do that at home?” “No,” I said, “but Rosie and I don’t generally make grammatical errors.”

my position on social skills had changed. I had previously regarded them as unimportant, and still considered them overvalued, but I had to accept that in this case my ineptness had caused terrible damage.

“I’m not a person with autism any more than I’m a person with lesbianism. I’m lesbian. I’m autistic.

“Some days I’m doing well in some areas and not in others, and the next day it’s different. But I’m always autistic. It’s my identity, my permanent way of being, and those of us who can speak out have to do it for those who can’t.”

And we autistics aren’t always great with the non-verbal stuff. What we just saw was the neurotypicals using their secret language … like, ‘Hey, do you want to take the d-o-g for a w-a-l-k?’ They used it to send a warning about one of us. To shut us down. To oppress us.”

In the end, it’s your choice, your identity. Diagnosis is for diseases.”

“Our goal was to decide whether we should seek an autism assessment. My provisional conclusion is that he could be misdiagnosed as autistic, in which case he would be subjected to unnecessary treatment and possibly discrimination. If he is autistic, the outcome may be the same.”

recommend consulting a medical specialist. The medical profession is less evidence-based than it should be, but I would trust them ahead of all alternatives.”

I was facing a complex problem with too much information to process and not enough to support an evidence-based decision. I had learned that this was to be expected in all situations involving human interaction.

the single most common reason for infertility is insufficient frequency of sex.

his initial rejection had been based on interview performance, which research has confirmed is an unreliable method of assessment.

When someone sends you an email conveying information, you should reply, even if no reply seems logically necessary.

For many years I had ignored sports, but Dave had encouraged an interest in baseball and I had slowly acquired the ability to engage emotionally with the outcome of a contest that had no direct bearing on my life.

I could not even get the initial greeting correct, because people do not generally commence a conversation by saying “Hello”. It sounds odd and I was conscious of sounding odd no matter what formulation I used.

The animal-soul logic—easily adapted into reasonableness by replacing “soul” with “central nervous system”

rational argument seldom overcame irrational resistance.

Aspies were renowned for their aptitude as testers.

we are encouraged not to feed a person peanuts without first checking for an allergy. It would be reasonable if social conventions incorporated a similar sensitivity.

It’s better to learn from people who have had to work hard to achieve their skills, rather than the naturally talented.”

Rosie, as always, had a better understanding of my emotional state than I did.

Alexithymia

“If you’re intellectually capable, it’s advisable to become an expert on your own body and treatments,” I said. “Medical practitioners observe you far less frequently than you observe yourself. Also, they care less.

Was it possible that I had subconsciously engineered my suspension from the university? That I knew my class demonstration was likely to result in disciplinary action, and that I had then walked away rather than present an excuse which I had been assured would be accepted? That I had chosen to work in a bar and spend time with Hudson rather than continue what I had been doing all my adult life?

“Always better to talk face to face,” he said. On the contrary, face-to-face communication was likely not to be better if it required long-distance travel for a minor matter or if one or both parties was potentially violent.

I had observed that neurotypicals criticized autistic people for lacking empathy—towards them—but seldom made any effort to improve their own empathy towards autistic people.

None of us is expert in all situations. It is a sign of intelligence to recognize our limitations and of maturity to seek help when required. The school had zero problem with him being coached in the physical aspects of the cross-country run but apparently would have thought him deficient if he had sought help with the psychological component.

Almost zero had changed externally since I’d decided to identify as an aspie—as autistic. I had little doubt that I shared a set of attributes with many other humans,

and that the best available label was autism.

The questionnaires and checklists that showed me to be neurotypical were addressing, at best, a subset of these attributes, focusing on problematic behaviors—behaviors which, in my case, h...

I was a scientist. I was autistic. These were my key strengths.

I would never have the intuitive sense of others’ emotions that supposedly is needed to deal with interpersonal problems, but I had done my best using rationality, experience, and hard-won learning about human behavior, and those skills had been sufficient.

this series of novels was inspired and informed far more by life experiences—my own and others’—than research.