CENSSAS: Exploring Associations Between CENtral Sensitivity Syndromes and the Autism Spectrum

Not a recommendation.

http://www.censsas.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/user/status/1113003135700779008

This FM charity has 13k followers, which explains why this central sensitisation rubbish is spreading if they are willing to share it.

 

Can I be annoyed? Because i am.
How much more bs must we be submitted to?

 

'Related' how?

The most direct relationship I see is that they don't understand them, so the relationship is 'things we don't have a clue about'.

...and now they are trying to add ASC (WTF is ASC, call it by the same name as everyone else does FFS) to this collection of things they don't understand, as if that will make them easier to study, to help people.

All it would do is make them more difficult to study IMO, whilst having the unfortunate side effects of both growing their 'field' and discouraging serious people from entering it.

 

Just when you thought nothing worse than PACE could come out of King 's.

Why don't ethical committees stop this sort of thong from being inflicted on the public?

 

Some mistake surely. It is not the well known autism researcher who is infamous for the thong, but his brother Sacha.

 

That,s the desired outcome.
Gets research funded
By promoting the bastardisation of CSS , it morphs into something else . This is a veneer of applied " biomedical". Watch it play out.

There is a ship being steered

Eta last sentence

 

Funded through Economic and social research council.

This is a link to their research ethics:

https://esrc.ukri.org/funding/guidance-for-applicants/research-ethics/

I have no idea if this is useful. I don't have the wherewithal to look. And as it seems that ethics actually steer clear of useful guidance with regards to whether the research in question will truly be able to deliver any useful data I expect it's all above board. I suppose quality of research is not considered an issue of ethics.

I'm so disheartened by seeing endless (admittedly often small) amounts of money dripping into an ocean of nonsense research. I wish someone on the inside of all this would get smart and get a conscience to speak up.
It's also people's careers wasted where real contributions could have been made.

 

Is that the sciencey way of saying they pulled it out of their ass? Sorry, I mean derrière, if we're going with fancy language and stuff.

 

This is bad both ways because they will just say that people with autism are obviously mentally ill so "CSS" symptoms aren't real. It also give them licence to ignore any of those biological issues that people with autism do get and then they'll be able to also downgrade the CSS thing to "anyone who suffers those symptoms is delusional". Bad for the biological health of autistic people and bad for everyone else. Also potentially they'll be able to get hold of the children with any so-called CSS symptoms and hide them under the banner of autistic spectrum disorder.

 

My hope is that while the BPS-crew tries to load more and more cargo onto their ship, this will only help to sink it sooner.

 

@Andy - Health Warning ”Not a recommendation” is much appreciated!!

 

I thought that wording had more decorum than "I think this is a load of b*llocks"

 

Whichever you pronounce.......it is due warning for me to quickly “Walk on by” instead of

 

The CENSSAS Study

Investigating Associations Between Central Sensitivity Syndromes and the Autism Spectrum

Sarah Grant

Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience
King’s College London

Thesis submitted to King’s College London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2024

https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/330187559/2025_Grant_Sarah_1723195_ethesis.pdf

 

This popped up in my google scholar alerts too, due to the mention of ME/CFS, which from their definition I’m not convinced the author understands particularly well. I don’t think they're trying to dismiss it, just don’t understand it.

There’s acknowledgment of people not being believed etc, but I couldn’t see anything about diagnostic criteria used. They’re bundling a whole range of conditions together.

Probably won’t be spending any more time trying to understand this one.

 

I think that autistic people may well be sensitive to stimuli and I can see an overlap in mechanisms with ME/CFS as conceivable but that needs to be explored without prefaced concepts like CSS that don't actually mean anything in terms of testable mechanism.

 

Something that is frequently talked about by autistic people is 'sensory seeking', ie being undersensitive to stimuli (compared to other people), hence some physical repetitive behaviours or 'stimming' (repetitive movements or fiddling) to provide a consistency of sensory feedback. I've no idea how this might interact with any processes in ME/CFS but it is very much opposite to any theory of 'central sensitisation'. I hope the author will be considering this.

 

(Incidentally I first read the study title as "Inventing Associations Between Central Sensitivity Syndromes and the Autism Spectrum", which sounds about right.)