First a general comment. Dr Max Pemberton is experiencing the same kind of vested interest opposition that Profs Elliott & Grigorenko experienced several years ago on the publication of their The Dyslexia Debate.

Elliott and Grigorenko’ were not saying that some children don’t have difficulties learning to read / write. They were saying that such difficulties are normal. They are not due to neurodevelopmental divergence.

In a related case, MP Graham Stringer commented on the link between incarceration and illiteracy. He regarded illiteracy as being due to inadequate teaching. Not surprisingly he received and extraordinary amount of iinvective in written comments to his article. This case provided yet another example of collective ignorance. Some stated they were going to resign their membership of the Labour Party if he was reflecting their views.

Similarly Pemberton is not saying that some children have – to use an old fashioned ‘explanation’ – don’t have ants in their pants!  He and his like minded supporters, are fully justified in claiming that ADHD diagnoses are driven by Big Pharma (via the DSM-V5) and by those professionals who ride on this bandwagon

I was not at all surprised that Mason’s (a case of nominative determinism?  improvement at home was not matched by a similar improvement at school. The crucial difference between the two contexts is that at school pupils need to write (with their adept hand). While the documentary showed Mason drawing and writing with his right hand,there was insufficient behavioural evidence to identify his adept hand. Thew adept hand being defined as the hand which can handle complex unfamiliar uni-and bi-manual manipulo-spatial tasks with seemingly effortless ease. There is probably no more complex a manipulo-spatial task than writing since writing involves cultural (mind) and body (brain) aspects