Professional scepticism

 

My comments on a Substack Article by David Didau

Luqman Michel

Dec 16, 2025

Here are comments on Substack that I made on 16.12.2025 which has not received any response.

David Didau wrote: “We discount evidence that challenges us and overvalue evidence that confirms what we already think. The aim of research should not be to prove ourselves right but to find out where we are wrong.”

 

Luqman: True. But do we really need research to prove everything? I have long argued that PAD cannot be the cause of dyslexia because my students—certified as dyslexic in English—could all read fluently in Malay and Pinyin. Common sense alone shows it cannot be PAD: if a child can read in one language but not in another, the cause must lie elsewhere. Yet, I was blocked by many educators for saying this. Timothy Shanahan himself admitted in 2015 that there were no research reports supporting my discovery, but by 2017 acknowledged that such reports had emerged. Why insist on research reports for something so self-evident?

David Didau wrote: “It also requires attention to the quality of evidence. Single studies rarely settle anything. Cherry picked findings and selective citations are warning signs. So is hostility towards critics. Ideas that cannot tolerate questioning rarely deserve acceptance. Above all, scepticism means remembering that the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. It is not the sceptic’s job to prove an idea does not work.”

 

Luqman: If PAD is not the cause of dyslexia, then we must identify what is. I discovered that the real issue lies in teaching letters with extraneous sounds. Yet, despite decades of searching for a “holy grail,” not a single educator or researcher seems willing to test this simple hypothesis. Instead of cherry-picking studies, why not conduct the straightforward checks that could confirm or refute what I have consistently demonstrated?

 

David Didau wrote: “None of this requires teachers to become researchers.”

 

Luqman: Exactly. Do you really need to be a researcher to check how children pronounce letter sounds? This is basic observation, not advanced science.

 

David Didau wrote: “If we’re presented with claims that seem too good to be true, we should ask what would show the claim to be false.”

 

Luqman: Yes. Why don’t researchers simply ask children who were once unable to read—but later became fluent after a short intervention—why they struggled in the first place? If they won’t do that, why can’t they at least accept the tests I have conducted and explained? The evidence is there, waiting to be acknowledged.

“Our subjective judgments were biased: we were far too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence and prone to collect too few observations in our own research…………… As expected, we found that our expert colleagues, like us, greatly exaggerated the likelihood that the original result of an experiment would be successfully replicated even with a small sample.”(Daniel Kahneman)

 

"Don’t the children you serve deserve the best science can offer them rather than what you think might be happening? One hallmark of science is that what you think you “know” is commonly inaccurate when it is actually tested by the empirical, scientific method." (Tim Conway)

 

Read more at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2017/10/discourse-with-tim-conway-phd.html#more