Dyslexia support groups and teachers have condemned a professor of education who said today that the condition exists only as an emotional state rather than scientific diagnosis.

Julian Elliott, Professor of Education at Durham University, wrote that after 30 years in education he was unconvinced that there was a clear scientific diagnosis for the condition or any treatment that could help people identified as dyslexic.

"Dyslexia persists as a construct largely because it serves an emotional, not a scientific, function," wrote Professor Elliott in today's Times Education Supplement.

"There is no consensus about how it should be defined or what diagnostic criteria should be used. Forget about letter reversals, clumsiness, inconsistent hand preference and poor memory – these are commonly found in people without reading difficulties, and in poor readers not considered to be dyslexic.

"After three decades as an educationist, first as a teacher of children with learning difficulties, then as an educational psychologist and, latterly, as an academic who has reviewed the dyslexia literature, I have little confidence in my (or others’) ability to offer a diagnosis of dyslexia."

According to Professor Elliott, the reputation of dyslexics as clever people who struggle with words has made the condition a popular label for those who have poor literacy skills. Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein are among those who are thought to have suffered from dyslexia.

"Public perceptions often link reading difficulties with intelligence and, in our culture, an attribution of low intelligence often results in feelings of shame and humiliation," he wrote.

"It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the widespread, yet wholly erroneous, belief that dyslexics are intellectually bright but poor readers would create a strong, sometimes impassioned demand to be accorded a dyslexic label."

Professor Elliott criticised those who further the myth of dyslexia and what he calls the "dyslexia industry", which he blames for raising people's hopes that there is a cure for the condition.

"There is no sound, widely accepted, body of scientific work that has shown that there exists any particular teaching approach which is more appropriate for 'dyslexic' children than for other poor readers," he wrote.

Professor Elliott's article, published in advance of a television programme on Channel 4 next week that explores dyslexia, drew immediate criticism from the British Dyslexia Association, which called his analysis "inflammatory".

Professor Susan Tresman, its chief executive Association, said that educational psychologists and trained teachers had no problems spotting dyslexia.

"Dyslexia survives as a term because it is a real condition. I know of so many individual cases which completely refute what he is saying," she said.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said the problem exists for thousands of people, whatever it is called.

"Dyslexia may or may not be the correct name for the problem," he said.

"But there are undoubtedly many thousands of children and adults whose education has suffered as a result of their difficulty with word recognition.

"Rather than arguing about whether it exists, we need to find a way to cure it so that these sufferers are no longer so seriously disadvantaged."

Up to six million Britons are believed to suffer from the brain disorder that disrupts reading and writing.

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