PLT Test Blog

The reason I have a short list of talented researchers as my Dean’s List for this blog, is because of the generally low standard of much you can read about autism, even sometimes from governmental bodies like the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the in the US and NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) in the UK. I suppose these days it’s just called Fake News My contribution is to highlight the researchers I think are worth paying attention to. When it comes to the prevalence of autism, Éric Fombonne is a researcher who has more than his share of common sense.   Fombonne is a French psychiatrist and epidemiologist who also worked in the UK and Canada before moving to the US. He recently gave the interview below, which highlights glaring errors/weaknesses in reports which are picked up by the mass media and put forward as facts.  Inconsistent prevalence estimates highlight studies’ flaws “… the CDC does not attempt to assess everybody in ...

When used correctly, statistics are extremely useful to diagnose and solve all kinds of problems.  In the wrong hands, meaningless or mixed-up data can be portrayed as impressive statistics, on which other people faithfully rely, to form their opinions. Clearly there is nothing new in this; the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” was popularized by Mark Twain (1835-1910).  The advent of cheap computers and desktop publishing has made it possible for just about anyone to crunch some numbers and make impressive looking tables and graphs.   Along comes the internet and all of a sudden, somebody’s idea can go viral and be quoted back to them later, as a “fact”. This blog is based mainly on the blue skies research , being carried out at leading universities around the world.  I say “leading universities” because there are now so many universities/institutes, that not all academics are equal.  In the case of autism, it seems that the more someone publishes,...