Angdrambor

Go back and read Casey and Andy. I guarantee he knows it.

Has there been any research into the impact of scrum/agile on neurodiverse individuals?

I've got ADHD and Autism, and I find that an agile environment allows me the flexibility to work around my limitations without ever needing to disclose the underlying neurological reason.

IMO what would be maximally helpful is if members of the team were treated as emotionally healthy adults who can raise issues as they come up via talking to one another - no Retro necessary.

It's definitely the best, if you can do it. Not all team members are emotional healthy adults, however. Many of these people need a ritual to help them even think about the issues and what might be different. Many people have been taught, through negative experiences with management, that criticism cannot be tolerated, and will remain silent even when they know exactly what the team needs. Many intelligent, emotionally healthy adults work in an organization that doesn't accept criticism of management from devs, and making a commitment to "doing agile" can help persuade them to do the things they need to do.

We just don't live in a perfect world. People should be able to just be cool to each other without structure, but they can't, so they need help.

Where I'm from, you start a job, you finish it.

They shouldn't have led this guy to believe that they would be assuming the full financial risk of the procedure if they weren't going to do it. He could have just been content looking like Freddy and avoided the risk, if he had known that they were going to back out.

I can't understand why there isn't any slack at all to experiment and fail in most smaller organizations

That sounds like the opposite of agile. Isn't an iterative approach core here? Are people not speaking up at sprint retrospectives?