At least, that is what Science Daily has to say about a new study out of Exeter and Bristol. And with a title like that, you have to imagine people will jump on it and claim that the title says that the increase is real (read it again, it doesn’t say that at all).
From Science Daily:
“There is no doubt that the reported prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders has increased spectacularly over the last 20 years,” said Ms Russell. “Medical consensus is that the increase is not a ‘real’ increase in cases but is the result of the diagnosis being made more often.
“But our examination of letters and phone calls received by scientists carrying out research into the environmental causes of autism shows that, in the opinion of many people in contact with autistic children, it is not diagnosis but true incidence which has increased, and these people think that we should be investigating what factors have led to this increase. They believe that it goes hand in hand with lifestyle changes in the late 20th and early 21st century, changes which are causing autistic spectrum disorders to occur more often.”
Let’s take a look at the abstract from the actual study, shall we?
ABSTRACT
Introduction There has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) in the last 20 years. The reasons for this are disputed. The consensus among epidemiologists and other experts is that greater case load is due to changes in diagnostic practice rather than reflecting changing aetiological factors leading to a true increase in incidence. We set out to examine lay views concerning the aetiology and prevalence of ASD and whether they conflict with or support this consensus position.
Methods Over 100 unsolicited communications (letters e mails and several telephone calls) were received by a UK epidemiological study of ASD. We carried out a qualitative analysis of all correspondence in order to examine spontaneously expressed lay beliefs about the prevalence and aetiology of ASD.
Results The majority of correspondents suggested theories about environmental causes of ASD. This study demonstrates the strength of lay belief that the true incidence of autism is rising, and this is due to risks from modern technologies and changing lifestyles.
Conclusion This study based on unsolicited data highlights the contrast between lay explanations of increasing prevalence and the consensus opinion of medical experts. It also demonstrates how many people in direct contact with ASD have important information to share.
Yes, they read emails and letters and logged phone calls and came to the conclusion that many people in contact with autistics think that the increase is real.
I am stunned this got published. Maybe I am too close to the subject, but the idea that many non-researchers in the autism communities think the increase is real is, well, far from surprising.
For now, let’s just acknoweldge what is said and what is not said in the paper. They say that non-researchers believe the increase is real. They do not say the increase is real.
Left Brain Right Brain 
There is a lot to say about methodology.
The amateurism of official scientists is growing and is opening the door to quackery.
About stats and methodology:
http://doctor.ndtv.com/storypage/ndtv/id/3958/type/news/Dad%E2%80%99s_age_not_related_to_autism.html
Other:
In the case autism is genetic nobody knows if the reason to have babies later is not because one of the parents is having a lower form of autism.
In the case of envirmental factors theory without introducing these factors in the stats there is no valid stats.
So there is no valid statistics that prove something in one or other way.
But what we know:
Statistics without methodology is not science.
And quacks welcome official “science” without methodology.
Please read the danger is here :
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-science-nov23,0,6519404,full.story
I do think it goes hand in hand with lifestyle changes in the late 20th century and early 21st century, but not the way they mean. The timing is most likely not coincidental.
“People affected by autism” means parents, I’m guessing.
I would say there’s every reason to investigate this project for the potential for fraud.
What is this address to whom these “unsolicited” letters, emails and telephone calls were sent?
Who knew of this address?
Who logged the phone calls? Why did they call?
How did the correspondents know that these approaches would be welcome?
This thing is has the ripe smell of a scam.
There we go:
Ms. Ginny Russell
Title: Ms.
Job Title: Research Student
[EDIT by Sullivan]
Biography
Before joining Egenis I spent 10 years working in television. I trained as a researcher at the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol, and went on to become a producer/director. My television credits include The Really Wild Show and Nature Detectives for the BBC, the science magazine show What Will They Think of Next? for Granada (ITV), the astronomy programmes 3 Minutes to Impact and Eclipse for Discovery, and Cross Country for HTV. I produced and directed the local wildlife show Wild West Country for Carlton, which initially brought me to Devon. I also freelanced as a reporter for Radio 4’s Natural History Programme and Science in Action on the BBC World Service.
I settled in Devon working as director of the Phoenix Media Centre, then joined Egenis in 2002 as External Relations Officer. This role involved developing the Centre’s communications strategy, editing the Genomics Network Magazine and programming the British Association’s Science in the City festival in 2004. I started my PhD in 2008 thanks to a studentship from the ESRC/MRC but retain an interest in science communication co-ordinating Exeter’s Café Scientifique. I have written for various publications including The Times Educational Supplement and Britain in 2008 and have an ongoing science interview column called The Lowdown in the local magazine Devon Life.
My first degree was in psychology at the University of Bristol, my second in film at the London Institute, and my masters was in bioinformatics at Exeter University.
Visitor,
I edited the contact information out of your post. Other blogs tend to post contact information in an effort to intimidate researchers and I don’t want this blog to be mistaken as taking those tactics. I can delete your comment if you feel this was inappropriate.
It does seem pretty useless, too. What valuable interpretation can be derived from the results? You can’t even say ‘most parents believe X.’ The data is uninformative about this, because the sample is completely self-selected.
But it is a meme innit, and memes have lives of there own regardless of there falsity or veracity, that is why people continue to throw the spilt salt over there shoulders, can’t do any harm can it?
This meme can take hold on any expert in any system that is not one which requires and expertise of autism, likewise I can continue in false beliefs (note to self, come off it Laurentius, you know that is impossible, you know you know everything and ar infallible ha ha … ) well hypothetically I can continue in false beliefs about things I in reality know not enough of to determine my error.
It was the case last week during a course for doctoral researchers, that I found myself countering the vaccination hypothesis in someone who no doubt knew more about her field than I will ever know but simply accepted “common knowlege” about autism.
I think the real question has to be, why people carry out studies of that sort, maybe somebody ought to make a study of that and write a paper in turn, no that is getting ridiculous, it’s all a self serving industry really.
Everyday what I do see is selection, (most of it I am sure unconscious) as to what is written or spoken about autism, well it’s back to Dawkin’s memes again innit, and I can’t personally stand the man any more than Pinker.
Really shouldn’t have got more than a page in a monthly interest mag.
Unless there’s a lot of phenomological discussion in the full text, it doesn’t deserve more than a preface to another study, or a section in the lead authours PhD.
I don’t think it’s a scam, as the original ALSPAC study seems legit. Seems like a paper to prop up a PhD or justify further study.
Nothing wrong with that, if the methodlogy is done properly (I’m assuming thematic analysis with second rater and structured reading protocols), but releasing a paper like this in the current politicised climate of autism study? Risky I’d say.
Expect to see it misread and misquoted every which way but sideways.
The headline’s bad in another way, too. Maybe it’s just my quirky non-NT interpretation of things, but to me, “people affected by autism” does not equal “people in contact with autistic children”.
Indeed, the headline is not representative of the actual people included in the study, who are themselves only a small subsection from another study of a section of society.
It would be interesting if the lead authour was to do further study to see if there is a correlation between ‘real increase’ beliefs and likilihood of stating those beliefs, to see whether they truly represent the consensus, not just the consensus of stated opinions.
Without knowing what data the ALSPAC required, we can’t say for sure that the Russell et al study is representative of parents and carers, or just parents that may have volunteered their opinion. The Russell study does say ‘spontaneously expressed’ and ‘unsolicited’. This leads me to suspect that parents volunteered thier opinions without being asked.
“There has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) in the last 20 years.””
Sometimes I am daft I don’t see the obvious, now ‘ang on arf a mo, the abstract is up the creek, Well even the best can’t tell the difference between incidence and prevalence, and where is the evidence of the increase in prevalence, it’s the accidence we are seeing not the evidence, it doesn’t get any denser.
Prevalence and number of diagnoses are not the equivalent unless one believes that trees fall silently in Berkeley when the protesters are not looking.
It’s a word game, dependant on your construction of and faith in diagnosis or the core concept of the diagnosed itself.
LR,
Please go talk to Brugha.
He needs you.
“People Affected by Autism Believe Increase Is ‘Real,’ Not Diagnostic”
-So does Francis Collins, head of the NIH.
Jake Crosby,
Fancis Collins also believes that there is a big problem with the IACC caused by a lack of trust. Your own David Kirby noted it in a blog post. Could that have anything to do with the fact that your blog harasses people on the IACC who don’t adhere to your viewpoint? Did your blog ever correct the huge misquote that you made of Dr. Landis? I know that no one on your blog noticed the glaring error, which in itself says a lot.
It couldn’t possibly be that people with lots of direct hands-on experience are better informed, and more objective than those whose juicy institutional career salaried positions inhibit them from expressing a pharmaceutically-incorrect honest objective view.
I have the complete paper if anyone wants a copy – please email me at the.new.republic.blog [at] gmail [dot] com
Indeed Robin.
Personally, given the choice between listenting to a ,say, mother of three autistic children, or a multiple credentialed researcher with access to studies covering tens of thousands of cases across several continents over several decades, I’m going to choose the person with superior information each and every time.
You can bet I’ll listen to the mother for day to day living tips and the researcher for long term trends in autism.
It still amazes me that people would much rather listen to irrelevantly qualified ‘experts’ and ‘autism mothers’ than relevantly qualified and experienced experts like Offit and co, when talking about aetilogy and epideimiology.
I can’t think of any area of human interest where overwhelmingly unqualified, inexperienced ornery people are attributed with such a high degree of knowledge and understanding merely for having a family.
Dedj, I take it you will also trust in the expertise of Trofim Lysenko as he was the top-credentialled agronomist in the rather big USSR for many decades, and ignore what old farmer Vlad might have fantasised in the same years, let alone what some dissident nut in a Siberian mine might rant about in his dying breaths. And of course “autism mothers” couldn’t possibly have an obsessive interest in finding out the truth rather than finding out the career-convenient “truth”. By the way, the opening assertion of that article that there is a professional research consensus that there is no increase is collops.
Why would I trust someone who was demonstrated as a failure by his own projects? That’s a bizarre assertion. You must have missed the nuance of my post.
As an adult, I developed out of the binary thinking mode you misattribute to me years ago. It’s such a shame some people don’t.
I’m not sure why you think ‘obsessive interests’ actually matter. Many people with autism, aspergers and BAP have ‘obsessive interests’, this doesn’t entail that they are therefore any good at it, unlike people who actually have demonstrated enough competence to qualify and become well respected. I’m sure the irony of mothers of autistic children displaying autistic behaviour in their quest to prove autism isn’t genetic will be lost on you.
I’m not sure why you think the opening assertion is ‘collops’. Barring the H-P paper (which didn’t say what many of it’s supporters claim it did) other papers that have attempted to find a ‘true’ increase have come up negative. Even papers that look for the ‘hidden horde’ have been finding them (us) across all age groups.
Perhaps you might like to ask the authour for her lit review? Assuming you know what one is of course.
I look forward to evidence of further reading. I hope I’m not going to be waiting around like I did with the last person who held your views, and the person before them, and the person before them, and the….well, basically every ‘autism mom knows best’ proponent I’ve come across in the past few years.
Toodles and good luck!
Dedj, “Barring the H-P paper (which didn’t say what many of it’s supporters claim it did)”
You don’t come across as having the right attitude of someone seeking to learn, but anyway. I’d be grateful if you could clarify what you think H-P didn’t say. Here’s what the u of c newsroom had to say: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/19273. Was that wrong? Cheers.
Robin,
please spare us the “you don’t come across as having the right attitude…” type comments. Dedj, as with many who frequent this site, spend a considerable amount of time studying questions such as these.
Quite frankly, your comment comes across as as debate trick to dismiss her ideas without actually addressing what she said. In particular, she stated that the H-P paper doesn’t say what many who quote it say it does. She is quite right. Many who quote it claim it as proof that the increase in autism “rate” is due to a real increase in the number of autistic people. Dedj is quite correct in pointing that out.
Where she is wrong is in characterizing them as “supporters” of the paper. I don’t think one can support a paper in general. In this case, one can not “support” a paper by misrepresenting it.
The press release you cite has some flaws.
The current funding does not have a 10-20 times differential in genetic vs. environmental causes. Environment and gene-environment research is now the majority of funding. Before you dismiss me asnot having the right attitude, read this.
However, you do realize that this press release is not what Dedj was referring to, don’t you? “Supporters” not being “authors”.
Here is a news story that is misleading.
Of course it is “real”, as in, yes, there are more children being diagnosed with autism today compared to previous years (more adults to, for that matter). The problem is many people interpret “real” to mean that there is an increase in the fraction of children with autism. We can’t say that with the data we have.
If you disagree, how do you reconcile the fact that the increase is “unexplained” with it being “real”. Real would be “explained”.
Sullivan, “please spare us the “you don’t come across as having the right attitude…” type comments. Dedj, as with many who frequent this site, spend a considerable amount of time studying questions such as these.”
Your second sentence there (which I never doubted), which is about activity, has nothing to do with the first, which is about attitude in replying to me.
“Quite frankly, your comment comes across as as debate trick to dismiss her ideas without actually addressing what she said. In particular, she stated that the H-P paper doesn’t say what many who quote it say it does. She is quite right.”
Excuse me, but Dedj wrote something ambiguous but potentially interesting so I asked for a clarification as to quite what it was that H-P supposedly did or did not say. I’m still waiting for that clarification. The UC’s own statement appears to make clear they are saying the increase is not mere detection increase. Is there some evidence that they were misrepresenting their own H-P there? Why not just get to the point? Cheers.
P.S. I haven’t read the H-P paper itself for the good reason that it (apparently) only tells me what I already know, and a sensible reading strategy is to concentrate instead on those papers etc that challenge one’s existing ideas or add to them rather than just confirming what one already thinks.
It was most definitely wrong, and dishonest.
“It’s time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California.”
…Irva Hertz-Picciotto
Source: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/autism-and-environment
Sorry, but I seem to have stepped into an online lunatic asylum by mistake.
Best wishes to all anyway.
@Robin: That’s completely offensive, uncalled for, and ableist. Further, it’s clear you are unable to address the discrepancy between the conclusions of the paper and what the primary author said to the media.
“it’s clear you are unable to address the discrepancy between the conclusions of the paper and what the primary author said to the media.”
The general rule is that due to the very heavy censorship of dis-corporate ideas by the “editors” of primary journals, researchers say what they have to to get published in the journal, then say what they actually think to everyone else.
An example is the researchers who publicly confirmed my prediction that tv-watching would increase Alzheimers, but they missed all mention out of their journal article as it would count a black mark “mistake” on their academic record.
But something tells me I’m talking to a brick wall here. Sorry if that was wallist of me. Best wishes.
Actually, the conclusions of papers must reflect their data, otherwise they won’t get past peer review. It doesn’t matter what “ideas” the researchers have, if what they say isn’t supported by the data. And in this case, the data (which is missing some key artifacts) would not match the views expressed in the media by the primary author. This is the basic reality that can’t be explained away by suggesting editors conspire to keep papers out of print because of their biases.
This is basically the “you’re closed minded (but I’m not)” canard, combined with mockery of the concept of ableism. Trouble is, being open minded means that you’re willing to consider ideas to be true or false. In this case, you should be willing to consider the possibility that the “epidemic” idea is false.
Robin,
did you leave the “lunatic asylum”? (btw, do you see that derogatory comment for what it is?)
Note that you are quoting a news release, not the paper. The paper, it’s conclusions and the data that provided those conclusions don’t support the statement Dr. H-P made. Had she inserted “possible” before “environmental”, she would have been more accurate.
That said,
My second sentence (about how much time Dedj has put into this subject) is absolutely on topic. It applies directly to the question of whether Dedj is interested in learning.
Actually, you are talking to people who are open to new ideas. We just need data, rather than opinion. Dr. H-P’s opinion is not supported by her data.
Perhaps if you read her paper rather than the news releases? I’m sorry to point this out, but it isn’t very “open minded” of you to ignore the actual source material.
Are *you* open minded or are you a brick wall? Are you open to the idea that Dr. Hertz Picciotto’s data do not support her public statements, and those of the others who quote the “result” of the paper? You appear to have come here with a conclusion and appear to be unable to change that, even in light of the actual data. Is that open minded?
Message from one asylum to another follows….!
It seems that people on this site don’t understand the difference between asserting something and demonstrating it. Sure I understand that you are of the view that:
“what they say isn’t supported by the data. And in this case, the data (which is missing some key artifacts) would not match the views expressed in the media by the primary author.”
But why should I believe you? You have to show with evidence (e.g. quotations) that that is a reasonable view. Do I make sense?
PS sorry that you get bothered by derogatories; many have had to live with / die by much worse than mere words! Cheers.
“Are you open minded or are you a brick wall? Are you open to the idea that Dr. Hertz Picciotto’s data do not support her public statements, and those of the others who quote the “result” of the paper?”
I will be open to evidence that such is the case but all I’ve seen here is assertions of this peculiar, highly-improbable thesis that H-P 2009 really says the opposite of what its author and UC say it does (which assertions are quite likely to be false). H-P’s paper is not fully openaccess and I’ve already stated that I concentrate my attention on papers which challenge my ideas rather than just agree with them. I asked (perhaps not with greatest tact) for some details on which to evaluate the assertions but you still aren’t forthcoming. Which leads me to suspect you are just deluded timewasters here. Cheers.
You are starting to sound like a troll. I’m more interested in your dramatic exits (that didn’t materialize) than the derogatory terms you throw out. The derogatory terms are of interest because they are troll like and are often used to divert conversation (you succeeded there, obviously) than the fact that I put any credence into your “aslyum” comments. Your assertion that it “bothers” me does not speak well to your own motivations.
Dr. H-P’s paper appears to challenge your ideas. The main conclusion–as supported by the data–is that artifacts do exist which have driven up the reported prevalence of autism.
You seem to be trying to distance yourself from the paper by Dr. H-P, while at the same time using it to support your claims. Very odd behavior.
Robin,
I keep bringing up your derogatory comments because they demonstrate that you are acting like a troll. No one is rising to your obvious bait.
But, if you wish to come here and use a paper as evidence, please read it first. Otherwise, find a blog where people also havne’t read it. That way you can make your unsupported assertions without being challenged.
If you wish to cite what the author has said outside of the paper, you would also do well to post to blogs where people haven’t followed the story.
“The relationship to the investigation of environmental causes is not the subject of the paper, and the press release did go somewhat astray. ”
(edit to add) and: “I don’t know how much of it is due to a true increase in cases, and in fact, nobody does.”
http://autism.about.com/b/2009/01/13/notes-from-mind-researcher-dr-irva-hertz-picciotto.htm
I have no idea when I became female, but I can assure you (without having to check) that I am not. I was even confused with Amanda Baggs once despite not using US terms or spelling.
I’m pleased to note my effort is appreciated, although I must point out that I cannot legally claim any expertise, despite having clinical experience in autism services, vocational experience in autism organisations, and social experience with autistic people excluding diagnosed family members like myself and ‘highly probables’ like my father.
Anyway, the question of what HP did/did not say is a distraction. It irrelevant to Robins initial assertion (that Russell’s opening statement is unsupportable).
But anyway, quoting the press release is a piffle of nonsense, as we’re talking about SUBSEQUENT interpretations by OTHER people. Which part of ‘supporters’ was confusing?
I’ve seen it claimed (or insinuated, strange how few vaccine skeptic are willing to state beliefs openly and directly) that the H-P paper is a ‘slamdunk’ that ‘obliterates’ the autism=genetics and increase=better diagnosis. Not only did the initial paper state clearly that not all factors have been accounted for, but HP herself also said:
“we are not yet able to explain all of the rise. I don’t know how much of it is due to a true increase in cases, and in fact, nobody does.” http://autism.about.com/b/2009/01/13/notes-from-mind-researcher-dr-irva-hertz-picciotto.htm
When the lead authour herself says the opposite to what people claim she did, I’d rather stick with her version.
As an aside, I find it amazing that the H-P paper is accepted almost without question, yet her later mercury load paper recieved a slating far and wide from multiple vaxx skeptic sources.
Being willing to learn include being willing to assess the validity of sources. I’ve came across ‘autism parents’ who have been dealing with thier (now adult) autistic offspring in such a manner as to cause visible distress. One parent – a intelligent, educated and successful woman – had no idea why her son liked to weigh himself down with jewellery, multiple mobiles, and thick leather jackets even indoors and in warm weather.
I don’t find the ‘direct experience’ canard very convincing becuase I’ve seen a number of cases where it is definetly not true, and seen many cases where the ‘expert’ knew significantly more about autism as a condition and concept than the parent or carer.
I could repeat all of my observations that have been totally unaddressed by Robin, but enough of this distracting yet amusing hither and to.
Back to the paper in question.
Dedj,
I don’t know when I got the “Dedj is female” thing stuck in my brain, or how! Thanks for the correction.
Robin, asserting something looks like this:
“By the way, the opening assertion of that article that there is a professional research consensus that there is no increase is collops.”
So get off your high horse.
No one here has claimed the HP et al says the ‘opposite’ to HP’s public claims, which have varied btw. Thats pure invention by you.
The statement supporting the claim that HP et al. isn’t the death blow to the ‘better diagnosis’ concept is within the abstract, which even you must have read. http://journals.lww.com/epidem/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2009&issue=01000&article=00016&type=abstract.
“Dedj,
I don’t know when I got the “Dedj is female” thing stuck in my brain, or how! Thanks for the correction.”
Quite a few people seem to think it. It got banded around a few times during my major spat with lur ker this time last year. I’ve been called female here, other autism hub blogs, and some blogs where males are rare which includes those related to my female heavy field of study.
At least it’s understandable on a nursing/OT/PT/HCA/SaLT/Pod forum where most are female in the job so most are female in the forums.
At least one person has managed to correctly work out my area of study, nationality and gender from a few posts elsewhere.
Just to pre-empt – I said “When the lead authour herself says the opposite to what people claim she did, I’d rather stick with her version.” after Robins claim, not before.
You know you are ALL guilty of misrepresenting.
Some wilfully so, some unconciously so, but in each case it is like the subtle distortion applied to a compass needle by the presence of magnetic material close by.
It’s like reading the news, you build a picture out of the bits you want and conclude in the direction you wish to, whether we live in good or bad times. Now where is my evidence.. oh yes I left it in a paper somewhere:
Ross, L., (1977) The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. In L Berkowitz ed. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol 10 New York Academic Press
Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard M (1975) Perseverance in self perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 pp. 880 -892
I do not think even if a thinking machine AI algorithm were invented to sort and verify papers that it would not be open to the bias of the original programmers.
Yes there are social and economic pressures on the direction of research, that is what Autism Speaks is all about after all, political influence, and of course big Pharma have an interest, they would be out of business if they did not, but the downright paranoid rantings of some posters give this distortion a weighting much more than it deserves by inflating the real out into a fantasy land where I must be being paid (or held to ransom) by dark forces in order to write this.
My bias I declare openly so that people can apply the necessary magnetic correction to my compass is that I believe in chaos theory as applied to genetics, environmental and the interaction of the fundemenatal forces of nature’s influences on ontogeny in general, this chaos theory also models human social and economic behaviour at a macro level.
I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to verify the notion of autism as anything other than a hypothetical construct, and the problem with science is that it proceeds “arse backwards” and hey I actually got to use that phrase in the title of a conference presentation so it is a part of the literature now 🙂
As I have said before, instead of deciding your list of already predetermined disorders and looking for genetic evidence of there causation, how about examining the other way about, looking at what clusters of genes and interactions do, then rewriting the whole nosology from the ground up.
A hard task yes, but isn’t that what science is supposed to be about?
And anyone cares to think my take on it is crazy, well is that a dead cat or a live one?
Hey Sullivan,
Francis Collins, being NIH director, has responsibility over the IACC, and therefore has every reason in the world to defend the IACC.
He has no alterior motive for saying the epidemic is real, however, probably because he would look like a complete fool to make such a statement.
I read your blog post on our “glaring error” about Landis’s quote, btw, doesn’t change the meaning at all.
Breaking News: Tom Insel believes Epidemic is real, perhaps the last person in the medical community before Paul Offit to come to such a realization. Because like Francis Collins, Insel would also look like a complete fool if he said otherwise.
http://www.ageofautism.com/
Jake,
Have you forgotton this?
Now go and do your homework.
I couldn’t care less what “Science”Blogs writes about me, and I don’t have “homework.” The semester is over, not that you would be familiar with when college ends since it is doubtful you ever attended, especially since it is my understanding that you were homeless. At least that’s what I heard from Jonathan Mitchell.
Perhaps you should go tell Ari to do his homework, he’s my age. Tell him to learn that autism is a disability before accepting that presidential nomination to the national disability council. That will be a good start.
Btw, more Breaking News: ex-CDC director Julie Gerberding is now President of Merck’s vaccines (surprise surprise):
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/12/julie-gerberding-former-cdc-director-to-become-president-of-mercks-vaccine-business.html#comments
I had a strange dream that there were two lunatic asylums right next to one another, with the members of the one talking across the fence to the other and vice versa. But strangely no psychiatrists anywhere to be seen. At last I woke up into the real world, but, oh g*d, the dream WAS/IS the real world!
@Jake Crosby:
Ah, the old “neurodiversity == autistic supremacism” strawman argument. Isn’t that one getting a little old? Nobody who’s important in the neurodiversity community actually claims that autism isn’t a disability, or that it is all beneficial traits. Most of the individuals and organizations in the “autism community” who work with the general disability-rights community are pro-autism-acceptance. I certainly don’t see Autism Speaks, and ESPECIALLY not the “mercury militia” (a.k.a. ARI, GenRes, TACA, NAA, et al.) doing such a thing. It’s a little ironic that the neurodiversity community, made up largely of autistics, is working with the disability community in general, while the so-called “curebies” (and especially the “mercury militia”) are off in their own world throwing a pity party. Isn’t it autistics who are supposed to be in their own worlds? (actually, that’s a somewhat bogus stereotype – autistic thought processes are just as likely, if not more likely, to operate in an “all other, no self” or “no self, no other” mode than in “all self, no other”; at least that’s the way mine tend to work).
Also, “last person in the medical community before Paul Offit to come to such a realization”? Please tell me when someone found credible evidence against the neurotype theory, because last time I checked, the scientific consensus strongly favored it. And no, the 10 or so different anti-vaccine neurotype-theory-denialist groups that are all basically fronts for the same organization don’t count.
“Perhaps you should go tell Ari to do his homework, he’s my age.”
He has demonstrated himself as an authourity many times, including to people who are themselves actual authourities, not blogpapers.
“Tell him to learn that autism is a disability before accepting that presidential nomination to the national disability council. That will be a good start.”
You have already been informed – repeatedly – what Ari think about disability and autism. He has clearly – repeatedly – made clear that he holds an opinion exactly opposite to the one you atrribute to him.
As for autism being a disability? Well, I’ll quote a few things for you, these took me mere moments to find in google.
“Well, it’s an invisible disability….” CBC Dec 10 2009
“It is a disability, one that comes with significant challenges in a wide variety of realms.” Open letter to Autism Speaks Oct 1 2009
You should at least make some effort to check the accuracy of your sources before bad mouthing people who are significantly higher up the chain than you.
“Btw, more Breaking News: ex-CDC director Julie Gerberding is now President of Merck’s vaccines (surprise surprise)”
Not really, shes qualified and experienced through multiple streams. Thats kind of the sort of people vaccine companies employ – people with experience and knowledge.
Funnily enough, when JG made slightly favourable noises that indicated there might be a small subsection of people with iatrogenic autism, ginger taylor and her ilk jumped all over it.
Do better next time.
“You should at least make some effort to check the accuracy of your sources…”
I think that was the point Orac was trying to make.
Yes, I remember the original thread.
Jake has, in the past, spent significant amounts of time posting on and about various scienceblogs. He certainly can’t reasonably claim to ‘not care’ as it was Jakes work about scienceblogs that prompted the post.
Slating someone and then asserting that you don’t care about their rebuttal would not go down very well in professional circles.
So basically Jake is saying that he doesn’t care about the accuracy of his work, as long as HE thinks he’s brilliant, that’s all that matters.
It is a shame he doesn’t apply himself to the task. A well informed contrary view is always a positive in a debate.
But perhaps a well informed view is likely to bring that person over to our side…
The problem is Jake’s building a public persona which isn’t going to do much for his employability… I kinda feel he’s being used by AoA. And I actually feel sorry for him.
Somehow to me, “reported prevalence” and “in the opinion of many people in contact with autistic children”, “reported” and “opinion” as operative statements seem significant.
Reported prevalence is not the same necessarily as actual prevalence with dependence there on source and definitional parameters of diagnosis, and an opinion is, well, an opinion in the absence of corroborative data. The study may be interesting as a metric of how much our belief systems and biases influence as it is as anything else.