But I hope that she and her colleagues get permission to go one step further: to document how the fundraising and “awareness” campaigns of the biggest, mainstream autism organizations have fed the quacks by amplifying fear, urgency, doom and dread among parents and families new to a diagnosis. They get told that time is running out, that they must do something, anything—and become perfect marks for the charlatans.

Until we turn that around—until we insist that our autism organizations change the way they fundraise and market themselves to the general public—we’re going to be stuck in a game of perpetual whack-a-mole with the quacks. They’ll still be getting a steady flow of “good excretion” from the wallets of parents easily misled by “scientific sounding” claims and the emotional allure of false certainty.