Reply #48: I agree that they probably didn't know some Slate columnist was going... [View All]

[Brotherjohn]

... to have posited their hypothesis a month before they put this on the web. I also agree they meant this as a starting point (from their data, at least) to look at such epidemiological links.

But from what I have read, they are far from the first to start looking at data sets like this w/ the goal of finding triggers/causes for autism. They are one research group of many and will be evaluated like all the rest.

As far as their conclusions, when they link to TV to autism based on areas w/ cable access, that is a big flaw there, b/c as has been pointed out (even by Easterbrook, I think), that could be due solely to socioeconomic factors as they affect disgnostic likelihood. Their link gets tighter when they look at precipitation, but as you point out, there are a slew of other things that could be tied to an autism cause/trigger that occur when one spends more time inside. I don't think they did anything to single out television as even among the most likely of those.

Yet they go back to their pre-conceived notion, and name their paper "Does Television Cause Autism?" Then they publish it on a Cornell business school web page.

Maybe they were just looking for a "sexy" title, and they were in a hurry to publish. But I don't think that kind of publicity-seeking behavior has a place in scientific research.