Laurent Mottron believes that the original narrow view of autism had some genuine scientific value, but DSM-5 ASD has broadened the concept to the point that it has become scientifically meaningless. He presents the idea of a “spectrum” as essentially taking a wrong turn, and he argues the only way to get autism research back on track is to move away from the idea of a “spectrum” and return to a focus on “prototypical” autism

Lynn Waterhouse goes further - she believes that even the original narrower concept of “autism” is a failed scientific hypothesis, and the best way forward is to drop the concept of “autism” entirely (and related concepts such as ASD, Asperger’s and PDD-NOS), and look for alternative constructs to replace it with (her tentative proposal is “phenotypes of neurodevelopmental social impairment”)

Allen Frances has said that (in hindsight) he made a big mistake by agreeing to put Asperger’s in the DSM-IV. He says it was sold to him as a very rare disorder and he was shocked to see how frequently it came to be diagnosed. And he’s said that DSM-5 ASD is “even worse” than DSM-IV Asperger’s. (Like Mottron, unlike Waterhouse, he has no objection to DSM-III/IV autistic disorder; Mottron is less negative on DSM-IV Asperger’s than Frances, but I suspect there is actually less distance between them in practice on that issue than a cursory reading of their public statements might suggest.)

While they don’t agree with each other in all the details, what they all have in common, is a critical attitude towards contemporary mainstream diagnostic practices - maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but your response sounded to me like an attempt to harmonise those criticisms away

> I'd generally say that having more awareness of how people deviate from neurotpicallity is a good thing.

I think “neurotypicality” is a myth. Nobody is “neurotypical”. As the English child psychiatrist Sami Timimi says, “we are all, all humanity, neurodiverse”.