I have not seen evidence that OEs are "real." They are a theory about gifted people, but not a theory for which there's a great deal of evidence, as far as I know. IMO the idea of OEs keeps a lot of 2Es from being diagnosed and getting real, valuable help.
This is my current thinking on this issue.
Although I'm never sure in psychology-land what exactly is going on.
Some things, like schizophrenia and real bipolar (with manias) are easy to see and figure out. Autism/AS seems to be pretty solid, too.
But with the OE/2e issue you are talking about a subset of an already small subset of the population where the problems are obviously not as clear cut as some of the more solid psychiatric problems.
