They often make assumptions from syndromes they do know about and erroneously apply them to ours. In recent years there has been great progress in the understanding of Rett Syndrome, Fragile-X Syndrome, and autism, to name a few. These are some of the hottest areas in neurodevelopment. These advances started in this room. I once read a description of the mindset of management and leadership that seems analogous to this situation.
Management oversees the logging operation.
Leadership sees the bigger picture and takes into consideration a wide variety of outside influences. The human genome project was not feasible when it was first proposed. It was the vision and the will to see it done that created the scientific advancements that are making it possible. Mario Cappechi, who developed a method to delete single specific genes in mice, was not funded by the NIH to do this work because the grant reviewers said it was impossible. Craig Venter's grant reviews, saying that his method to sequence the genome of an entire organism was impossible, arrived the day before his team submitted the paper with the finished work.