I’ve no doubt that they’re looking. However, the question is whether they’re looking in a way that would tell us anything useful.

Let’s put it another way. Is there any possible evidence that would convince the “vaccines cause autism” folks that vaccines don’t cause autism. If there isn’t ….

I don’t have a position wrt autism because all of the evidence (for any conclusion) that I’ve seen is pretty bad. However, it’s pretty clear that it’s a religious issue, where evidence doesn’t matter, for the vast majority of the folks involved.

The account at the link doesn’t support the conclusion.

From the article: “Hertz-Picciotto and Delwiche correlated the number of cases of autism reported between 1990 and 2006 with birth records and excluded children not born in California. They used Census Bureau data to calculate the rate of incidence in the population over time and examined the age at diagnosis of all children ages two to 10 years old.”

Whilel that methodology does eliminate migration, it tells us nothing about how diagnosis may have changed. At best, it tells us how relative-to-age diagnosis changed over time but doesn’t tell us anything more about different times.

For example, suppose that we ignored 75% 5 year olds in 1990. If we then started looking at half of the 5, that methodology would tell us that the rate of diagnosis in 5 went up by 50%. Yet, that methodology can’t tell us what fraction of any of those populations was tested or whether the testing criteria changed.

I know of two kids at CalTech. Both are on the autism spectrum. I’m sure there are plenty of non-autistics there, but autistic people are well represented at CalTech.

The assortative mating theory is not that there’s some recessive autism gene, but rather that autism is a kind of super-nerdiness. That is, nerds are interested in systems rather than people, but an ordinary nerd has some ability to read and understand people. According to the theory, autistic people are nerds, but more so– they’re interested in systems to the exclusion of people, lacking the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling.

Back in the day, lots of those guys didn’t marry and if they did, they found some woman not like themselves, thus sidestepping the changes of two recessive genes. But today–nerds galore.

Different diagnosis capabilities does, as does a change in incentives.

I’ve no doubt that autism researchers are correct when they claim that many autistics weren’t diagnosed in the past. Is it really likely that we’re currently diagnosing perfectly now? Is it impossible that we’re overdiagnosing?