Standing with Science: Ideology and Advocacy for Developmental Disabilities after 1980

The prominence of disability advocacy grew significantly after 1980. While research, assessment, and therapies for mental retardation and related developmental disabilities were traditionally in the realm of specialist psychologists, burgeoning advocacy organizations began challenging the classifications and interventions of these experts. This included calls by advocacy organizations like the American Association for Mental Retardation (AAMR) for research on aversive forms of behavior modification—involving electric shocks and other punishments—to be banned. In 1992, AAMR also significantly revised its longstanding and highly influential Manual on Mental Retardation, shifting its focus for classification away from individual impairments and toward societal supports. Some psychologists who specialized in developmental disabilities pushed back, calling these policies and revisions “postmodern,” “politically correct,” and anti-science. They defended scientific research and evidence-based care, framing their approaches as advocating for people with disabilities’ right to scientific knowledge and effective treatments. Advocates countered by arguing that reframing disability as a social issue was not an attack on science. The identity of developmental disability specialists as either primarily scientific or social problems-oriented was central to these debates. Sociologist Sydney Halpern has argued that clinical specialties associated with scientific innovation have greater prestige than those who address social problems. Building on the work of Halpern, as well as historians of psychology Jill Morawski and Deborah Coon, I argue that these specialist psychologists, who defended their approaches as scientific, sought to maintain their central role in developmental disabilities research and support, while enhancing the status of a historically low prestige field.