Autism and pseudoscience
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People with fringe ideas are after two things, money and someone to give their ideas recognition. People in desperate situations who are told by the established ideas that there is no hope are prime for manipulation. Parents of autistic children are in just such a category. They are desperate, helpless and want to help their children. Many will then fall victim to the peddler of false hope. | People with fringe ideas are after two things, money and someone to give their ideas recognition. People in desperate situations who are told by the established ideas that there is no hope are prime for manipulation. Parents of autistic children are in just such a category. They are desperate, helpless and want to help their children. Many will then fall victim to the peddler of false hope. | ||
| − | Autism itself carries several things with it that make it more susceptible to cranks and quacks. Autism usually doesn't | + | Autism itself carries several things with it that make it more susceptible to cranks and quacks. Autism usually doesn't manifest itself in detectable symptoms until after the first year of life. This means many parents believe their child was totally "normal" and then at around one year of age suddenly changed. While this is not actually what happens, the perception is real. The subtlety of this is lost on most people who search for the "cause" of what went wrong and instead of looking at the beginning of development they look for things that occurred right around diagnosis. There are plenty of things that happen around the first year of life and this leads many people to make the jump from [[Correlation does not equal causation|correlation to causation]]. |
Revision as of 21:47, 22 February 2008
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests in early childhood and is marked by impaired social interaction, impaired communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior. Over recent years autism has attracted much attention from the crank and quack community. These individuals have been preying on the parents of autistic children and making a fortune peddling their false cures, theories and therapies. This page is for the collection and collaboration of information at RationalWiki about this topic in our effort to shed light on the ideas, people and current events surrounding the pseudoscience community and autism.
Contents |
Why has Autism attracted so many quacks and cranks?
People with fringe ideas are after two things, money and someone to give their ideas recognition. People in desperate situations who are told by the established ideas that there is no hope are prime for manipulation. Parents of autistic children are in just such a category. They are desperate, helpless and want to help their children. Many will then fall victim to the peddler of false hope.
Autism itself carries several things with it that make it more susceptible to cranks and quacks. Autism usually doesn't manifest itself in detectable symptoms until after the first year of life. This means many parents believe their child was totally "normal" and then at around one year of age suddenly changed. While this is not actually what happens, the perception is real. The subtlety of this is lost on most people who search for the "cause" of what went wrong and instead of looking at the beginning of development they look for things that occurred right around diagnosis. There are plenty of things that happen around the first year of life and this leads many people to make the jump from correlation to causation.
Also the definition of autism has become more encompassing, diagnosis is getting better, and the focus on diagnosis is stronger. This has lead to a large increase in the number of diagnosed children with autism. All of this combines to lead people to believe there is an increasing "epidemic" of autism and that its being caused by an external environmental toxin exposed around the first year of age. None of this is true, while scientists can not offer a cure our understanding of what autism is and how it emerges is increasing exponentially. All of the evidence points towards a genetics/developmental cause and none of the environmental causes pushed by quacks and cranks have ever demonstrated any convincing evidence.
False therapies and cures |
Autism and vaccines |
Major players
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