In engineering, a feedback loop is meant to stabilize a system. In medicine, feedback guides us toward better outcomes. But in applied behavior analysis (ABA), feedback has become a trap, recycling failure under the guise of science, and leaving children and families caught in its circuitry.
The closed circuit
Stevens’ feedback loop diagrams are elegant in their simplicity: arrows circling back, showing how inputs and outputs can stabilize a system. In healthy systems, feedback corrects errors. In ABA, however, the loop is closed. Imagine a surge protector plugged into itself. The current never leaves the circuit. Sparks fly, but the system congratulates itself on being “evidence-based.”
That is ABA’s fatal flaw: a closed feedback loop. Compliance is defined as success, resistance as failure, and every outcome is fed back into the same bubble. The system cannot admit error, cannot integrate outside disciplines, and cannot reform from within.
Who is Stevens, and why his images matter
Stevens is an engineer whose feedback loop diagrams on LinkedIn have long been used to illustrate how systems either stabilize or collapse. His images are deceptively simple, but they reveal the danger of closed systems. When applied to ABA, they show how the discipline recycles its own failures.
Instead of interdisciplinary critique, ABA journals cite only ABA journals. Developmental pediatrics, psychology, sociology, and education stand outside the bubble, ignored. The result is what I call the “Glenda Bubble”: shiny, self-contained, floating above reality, impervious to outside voices.
Dropping the house
And when reality finally lands, the outcome looks eerily familiar. Think The Wizard of Oz (1939): a house carried by a gale, falling from the sky, crushing the Wicked Witch of the East. In the aftermath, striped socks curl up and disappear under the house, while the ruby slippers magically transfer to Dorothy Gale.
Dorothy’s very name is a pun, the gale that delivers the house is also the force of truth. ABA’s bubble cannot burst from within; it vanishes only when external reality drops on it. The striped socks are the evidence of harm, curling up and disappearing as the system loses its grip. The slippers, the power, transfer to those outside the bubble: families, advocates, and disciplines willing to build something better.
Wicked for Good
The popularity of Wicked for Good shows how audiences crave reframing: villains recast as misunderstood, resistance seen as survival. ABA, trapped in its bubble, still labels resistance as “problem behavior.” That is its fatal flaw.
The metaphor deserves an Oscar. My essay will never come close to a Pulitzer. But that’s not the point. The point is witness. The point is truth. Awards celebrate art; reckoning demands accountability.
A history of harm
This collapse is not theoretical. Ole Ivar Lovaas, celebrated as ABA’s founder, was documented in a 1965 Life magazine article using electric shocks and slaps to enforce compliance. For decades, these practices were defended as “scientific.”
Even in 2022, the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) only belatedly condemned the use of aversive electric shocks, after 60 years of practice and sustained pressure from autistic self-advocates and human rights groups. That was not reform; it was a delayed reckoning.
Ethics vs. enforcement
The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) requires reinforcement over punishment. But when electric shocks are still used, we must ask: What does “only after less intrusive methods fail” really mean? In ABA’s closed loop, punishment persists because the system defines its own failures as justification for more of the same.
Ethical codes are only as strong as their enforcement. In ABA, enforcement is swallowed by the bubble.
Sensory harm and perception
When a child recoils from a gummy EKG lead, we call it sensory sensitivity. So how is an electric shock perceived? Is it a tickle or a Taser? The answer lies in the child’s nervous system, not in our intent.
ABA’s feedback loop erases that perspective. It measures compliance, not harm. It records behavior, not trauma. And in doing so, it perpetuates a cycle where the child’s voice is never heard.
Collapse of developmental-behavioral pediatrics
In a North Carolina lawsuit, no one requested expert testimony from developmental-behavioral pediatricians. The defendant was a family practitioner with nine months of pediatric training and an MBA, no MPH, no research experience in therapy outcomes. That silence from DBP speaks volumes.
ABA filled the vacuum, presenting itself as the default “therapy” for autism. But its closed loop has crowded out disciplines that prioritize developmental science, family systems, and trauma-informed care.
Breaking the loop
Just as Col. Dodd’s decisive leadership at Minot reshaped Air Force Pediatrics and led to the Medical Home model, so too must leadership in autism care recognize when a system has collapsed. ABA cannot reform itself from within. The loop must be broken.
Breaking the feedback trap requires acknowledging that ABA’s circuitry is fundamentally flawed. Trauma-informed care, developmental pediatrics, and family-centered models must replace compliance-based programming. Only then can we build systems that stabilize rather than recycle harm.
Closing cadence
Feedback is meant to guide us toward truth. In ABA, it has become a trap, recycling harm, erasing voices, and perpetuating trauma. Stevens’ feedback loop diagrams remind us that systems can either stabilize or collapse. For ABA, the collapse is already here. The question is whether we have the courage to drop the house, break the bubble, and build something better.
Ronald L. Lindsay is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician.
