As criticism of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has intensified, the field has not gone quiet. Instead, it has adapted. A recent study by Doreen Samelson, Ben Pfingston, and Lindsey Sneed fits this pattern precisely. The headlines from their company are primed for autistics to click through and seek validation for long-held beliefs: “Study Finds More Treatment Hours for Autistic Children May Not Lead to Better Outcomes”. The study published in an autism journal, reads, “Dosage in Applied Behavior Analysis: Effect on Adaptive Behavior, Goal Attainment, and Dangerous Behavior”.
Their paper examines outcomes associated with different intensities of ABA therapy using real-world clinical data. On its face, this appears responsive. Therapy intensity is softened into the language of “dose”. Intensity has been one of the most persistent grievances raised by autistic people and former recipients of ABA. High-hour regimens imposed on young children have been widely described as exhausting, coercive, and developmentally inappropriate. The analytic question is not simply what the study examines. It is why this framing appears now, who is producing it, and what institutional function it serves.
The marketing ploy is at play. The contrast between the promotional framing and the study’s actual scope is instructive. The headline signals concession and responsiveness to autistic critique, while the paper’s content ultimately preserves ABA as the recommended intervention by recasting harm as a matter of dosage and implementation. This gap is not a communications accident, but a deliberate strategy of stakeholder reassurance and reputational management.
By acknowledging that intensity matters, the authors gesture toward autistic critiques without adopting their conclusions. The problem is reframed: not that ABA itself may be harmful or coercive, but that excessive or improperly dosed ABA may lead to weaker outcomes. Responsibility shifts from the model to its administration. This distinction preserves ABA’s legitimacy while narrowing the scope of critique to variables. The recommendation is that dose, fidelity, delivery, are variables that can be adjusted without disrupting billing structures, professional authority. They reassure the premise that behaviorists should remain the central experts on autistic development.
For funders and insurers, the message is clear: concerns are being addressed, the system is self-correcting, and the business will go on. Doreen Samelson is the Chief Clinical Officer at Catalight, a California-based service organization affiliated with Easterseals, operating squarely within the state’s ABA authorization, reimbursement, and compliance infrastructure. Catalight is not an external evaluator of ABA. It is a service provider whose financial viability depends on ABA remaining reimbursable, evidence-based, and professionally sanctioned. Particularly in California, payer scrutiny and public criticism have been intensifying.
What is missing from this literature is just as telling. These studies do not ask whether intensive behavioral conditioning is appropriate at all, whether consent is meaningful under mandated treatment regimes, or whether outcomes prioritized by payers align with autistic definitions of well-being. Those questions would threaten the foundation. Dosing does not.
Dosing became an acceptable critique because it poses no existential risk. It marks the boundary of what the ABA industry, particularly in California’s service-delivery ecosystem, is willing to question. Not the goals. Not the power. Not the premise. Just the volume. The issue is not whether such studies contain usable data—they may. The issue is recognizing the structural incentives shaping how that data is framed and concluded. When an industry evaluates itself, reform predictably stops short of anything that would endanger its continuation.
At Misbehaviorism, we track these patterns. The recent turn toward “dosing” in ABA research is not incidental. It is a strategic response to pressure—one that signals responsiveness upward to funders and regulators, while leaving autistic critiques safely unresolved. Clinically trained authorities embedded in an industry structure, produce research that cannot question the system that employs them.
Doreen Samelson’s public writing and professional work show a consistent pattern of restricting who is permitted to speak for whom, in ways that reinforce professional authority and fragment collective critique. In her essay opposing the principle “Nothing About Us Without Us,” Samelson argues that autistic self-advocacy should not be allowed to speak for nonspeaking autistic people. She maintains that clinicians or caregivers are more legitimate representatives, because they are positioned to interpret needs that autistic people allegedly cannot represent themselves. To justify this stance, she draws an analogy to her own disability, stating that because she uses a wheelchair due to a slow-progressing form of ALS, she cannot speak for others with ALS.
Samelson’s framing treats shared disability experience as insufficient for collective representation and replaces solidarity with credentialed authority. The same logic appears in her clinical work. Her bariatric surgery workbook assumes the legitimacy of an irreversible medical intervention and focuses on behavior modification to ensure compliance and long-term adaptation. In the ABA dosing study, harm is again framed as a problem of implementation rather than consent or structure. Across these contexts, the intervention itself remains unquestioned. What is regulated instead is who may speak, how dissent is expressed, and how subjects are expected to adapt to systems already in place.
Ben Pfingston’s role in the study reflects the data and analytics orientation of the ABA service industry. He presents himself as a social psychologist focused on social cognition and autism and has written that data analysis helped him cope with stigma by allowing him to become “the person I once needed.” He currently serves as a Senior Research and Data Analyst at Catalight. His academic and professional background centers on data analysis, research assistance, and technical communication, and not clinical practice. In his own writing, Pfingston frames his research as an effort to combat stigma, stating, “I do this so that no other autistic child has to go through what I went through,” and describes finding comfort and stability in numbers, treating data as both refuge and method.
This orientation carries through his professional work. Experience is rendered legible primarily through metrics, trends, and outcomes. Harm becomes something to be modeled, optimized, and adjusted without challenging the structure that produces it. Pfingston has been published by autism-facing organizations affiliated with Easterseals, where he reiterates themes about “the large amount of misinformation online” (a term behaviorists frequently apply to autistic-led critique), and positions himself as an explanatory voice for autistic experience. Within this context, Catalight elevates him as an autistic representative while advancing behaviorist frameworks, a move that lends credibility to ABA for parents and funders. His institutional position places his voice in service of an industry whose legitimacy depends on preserving ABA as evidence-based and reimbursable. Within this structure, analytics does not interrogate consent or coercion. It manages critique by translating it into variables the system is designed to absorb.
Lindsey Sneed’s career illustrates how clinical authority, academic affiliation, and research production are integrated into a single industry pipeline. She entered the field of behaviorism more than two decades ago and has remained within it continuously, progressing through clinical and supervisory roles inside ABA service organizations. Like her coauthors, she moved from Easterseals into Catalight, staying within the same service-delivery, authorization, and reimbursement ecosystem. Over time, she obtained licensure as a clinical psychologist and earned a BCBA-D credential. She now serves as Vice President of Clinical Excellence at Catalight, placing her in a role responsible for defining, evaluating, and defending clinical standards within the industry.
Since completing her Ph.D. in 2022, Sneed’s authorship and affiliation patterns further clarify this alignment. Although she holds a part-time adjunct appointment at a local university, her postdoctoral publications consistently list Catalight as her primary affiliation and are repeatedly coauthored with the same internal industry colleagues. Rather than developing an independent academic research trajectory, her scholarship remains tightly coupled to service delivery priorities. Within this structure, ABA is not examined as a system of power or consent. It is treated as an established intervention requiring refinement, standardization, and defense. Sneed’s career binds clinical leadership, academic credentialing, and research output into a single feedback loop, where industry practice generates research, research legitimizes practice, and academic affiliation confers authority.
Misbehaviorism in ABA Stakeholder Assurance, and the Politics of “Dosing”
The study at the center of this article claims to examine how different amounts of ABA relate to child outcomes using routine clinical records. At first glance, this emphasis looks overdue. Treatment intensity has long been a focal point of autistic criticism, particularly where children are subjected to schedules that rival full-time labor. These accounts describe not marginal inconvenience, but sustained exhaustion, loss of autonomy, and developmental distortion.
What matters, however, is not simply that intensity was examined, but why it has become the acceptable site of examination now. Framing concern around quantity allows the intervention itself to remain intact. The question quietly shifts from whether ABA should be imposed at all to how much of it can be delivered without provoking objection. In this way, research serves a dual purpose. It produces findings, and it communicates reassurance to funders, regulators, and institutions invested in continuity.
This is how Misbehaviorism operates when an industry evaluates its own practices. Inquiry is permitted up to the point where it would destabilize the system that authorizes it. The focus on dosing draws that line. It signals responsiveness without conceding authority, adjustment without accountability. The conversation about harm does not end here, but it is contained here, precisely where the system can absorb it and continue unchanged.
The fixation on “dosing” is not reform; it is damage control. By relocating harm from the nature of ABA to the amount administered, the industry protects the intervention while appearing to concede something to its critics. This research does not ask whether children should be subjected to behavioral conditioning at all. It asks only how much can be imposed before resistance becomes unmanageable. That is not inquiry. It is assurance, delivered in the language of science.
You can share this article through these platforms, where it is accessible to the public:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7418438302426349568-lzIB
Misbehaviorism .com 
Leave a comment