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When Geeks Meet, Are They More Likely To Have Autistic Kids?
An anonymous reader writes "Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen thinks scientists and engineers could be more likely to have a child with autism, an idea that is fairly common currency in Silicon Valley. But many researchers say the proof isn't there yet. From the article: 'Baron-Cohen proposes that systemizing ability can be inherited — and that in information-technology (IT) enclaves such as Silicon Valley, where hypersystemizers are more likely to meet, pair off and have children, the result is a higher incidence of autism. Back in 1997, for example, he concluded that fathers of children with autism were more than twice as likely to be engineers as were fathers of non-autistic children. But autism researchers ... found that fathers of children with autism were more likely to work in medicine, science and accountancy, as well as engineering, and less likely to have manual occupations. They suggested that these fathers were simply more likely to have reached a higher level of education. Baron-Cohen says that when he reanalysed the data and controlled for education level, he found that fathers of children with autism were still more likely to be engineers, although the difference was smaller.'"
I thought he just made films about annoying people..
Who else said, "wait, is that Ali G?"
oops.
Are you an idiot?
Isn't this a dupe?
Wasn't it a terrible story the first time around?
Date a blonde.
jk
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
If it were true, that would imply that when geek guys meet geek girls, they get it on, instead of just looking awkwardly at each other.
I am officially gone from
Parents that are in better paid positions such as engineering ones are more likely to be able to afford to have their children properly diagnosed. Poor children with learning disabilities are just lumped into the "stupid poor kids" category.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
WTF?
So, people with more money are more likely to get their kids medical care and get a diagnosis? Shocking! What a revelation! Next they will tell us that people with more money are more likely to have a nicer house.
I think this story has already been posted.
Uh? If the mechanisms and inheritance are better understood it can lead ways to alleviate or avoid the condition. As someone who's significant other is officially diagnosed Aspie and a software engineer I'd like to know my odds and all the ways I could mitigate the risks. I would be perfectly fine with another Aspie/high functioning autistic in the family, but the more severe end of the scale scares me profoundly.
There you go, perpetuating a stereotype that all ACs are idiots by displaying idiotic behavior. I cannot in good faith support such statements and ask /. editors to erase the comment database going back three years.
I've met lots of geeks and don't have any children, autistic or otherwise. Am I doing it wrong?
So is the implication that smart people have autistic children or just lazy smart people? Did they make sure to consider geographical settings or perhaps early child rearing techniques used ? Surely intelligence is'nt the only link. Otherwise now we have a good reason for people to be stupid. Propogation of the species.
If a kid was socially awkward, we just called them shy or socially awkward (or geek and dorkwad on the pejorative side). Now every kid who isn't happy all day and whistling zippidty-do-da out his ass 24-7 has some kind of disorder. Not to dismiss those who legitimately have real autism (and they are out there), but all this "My kid has autism spectrum disorder/Asperger's," etc. shit has gotten ridiculous. Between that and all these ADHD kids (we called that hyperactive or just "rebellious" when I was a kid), these kids are so doped-up that I'm amazed they can even walk upright. Christ, NOBODY took medication when I was in school (except for one diabetic kid we had). And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
Now get off my lawn!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This all explains /.
At a recent speaking engagement, Temple Grandin (who knows a thing or two about autism) said that Steve Jobs was definitely "an Aspy" and that there are many more in Silicon Valley but she won't use their names because they're still alive.
More like to have autism or more likely to be diagnosed?
Summary-
One guy says this...and it reinforces what some people believe through anecdotal evidence.
Other scientists say nah, not really
Guys does better research, oh, yeah, its not really that big a difference...but we need to look at it more
*eyeroll*
*SIGH*
I've heard that older fathers are more likely to have kids with autism (think it was on the news), and isn't it more likely that a man with a lengthy education get kids later? And it maybe takes the nerdiest ones a bit longer to find a mate... (Like me)
When geeks meet and have sex, that's like incest.
Summary-
One guy says this...and it reinforces what some people believe through anecdotal evidence.
Other scientists say nah, not really
Guys does better research, oh, yeah, its not really that big a difference...but we need to look at it more
*eyeroll*
*SIGH
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
So the guys claim is only backed by his own research while two other studies had opposite results. I think we shoudln't jump to any conclusions just yet.
And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
Yeah, that's because they all died when they ate their first peanut butter & jelly sandwich.
We used to also thin that the Eartth was flat and that Mercury was delivering messages to the Olympians in the sky. Science and technology have explained these phenomena to us in addition to enlightening us to autism and ADHD. I have ADHD and was labeled "rebellious" during my more youthful years. I was nearly the most misunderstood and underestimated child at my school.
I have since gone on to become the most successful and well-balanced member of my family in the past 400 years. So maybe calling them rebellious just gives them the motivation to prove otherwise.
When I was a kid 24.679 years ago I had 4 kids in my 9am class with special needs, 2 in my 10 am class, 6 in my 11 am class, and 5 in my noon class. I had an average of 4.25 kids with special needs in my classes. There was only a 0.003% mention of incidence of autism on a daily sliding window basis but that didn't matter because we all got the same number of pencils, exactly 1 per week for the school year for 36 weeks of school, but on leap years we didn't get an extra 0.00555 pencils which I thought was wrong, nor did anyone take into account the total length of carbon trace each of us used or the exact pressure each of used pushed with.
When I was a kid we didn't have autism.
Yeah, that's because they all died when they ate their first peanut butter & jelly sandwich.
I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed that pattern long before the 90's.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Non-geeks should bang geeks so they can have kids who are just plain smart.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
That guy is the brother of Borat (Sacha Baron-Cohen) how that can be serious matter? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Baron-Cohen
... to give it it's proper name. Basically, people with similar behaviours end to seek out each others company. For example, heavy drinking smokers will probably find themselves at the bar or outside in smokers' alley. Similarly, ability to survive economically will determine where people can live. If some of these behaviours are genetically determined then they are also more likely to reproduce and so lead to a concentration of those genetic predispositions. But, and this is the bit but, there's a very thin thread between genes and complex behaviours, despite what you might read in the papers. There is a breathtaking array of interactions between, for example, genes and environment in producing behaviour and that are far from being properly inderstood that Baron-Cohen's thesis is, to put it mildly, overinterpreting the available evidence.
Correlation and causation and all of that jazz.
I could be more detailed but why bother?
I worked one summer at a camp (paid for by the state) for children with Asperger syndrome.
Most had parents that where very successful in their profession.
Asperger syndrome is genetic and if you have a "small" doze of it, you tend to be very focused on one subject and a little asocial.
Social enough to meet a partner though...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
Kind of lacking in the empathy area.
Recognize anyone around you?
Used to be, when someone was acting weird, we thought they were possessed by a demon. Used to be people just died of "old age". Used to be, you could cure sickness with leeches.
Every once in a while, we learn something about the human body and brain that lets us understand it better.
Also, they don't medicate for autism/Asperger's. You believe a lot of crap.
Marry the cheerleader (football captain). That is all.
How many adult 'geeks' have undiagnosed, yet are highly functional, autistic disorders? Everyone's got something wrong with them...
Autism is the superior evolutionary track of humans.
Socially queer and smart is the only way forward!
We'll have none of that socializing in this house damn it, get to your capsule and learn ancient egyptian!
Temple Grandin (who knows a thing or two about autism) said that Steve Jobs was definitely "an Aspy"
No. He was just plain... an ass.
"When Geeks Meet, Are They More Likely To Have Autistic Kids?"
I've met about more than ten fellow geeks already this morning and the thought that by doing so I've made them more likely to have kids of any kind is kind of disturbing. I'm off to wash my hands...
Look -- there _has_ to be some downside to intelligence. Neuroses, depression, whatever. Otherwise, the entire human race would have self-selected for some higher intelligence level than IQavg=98 sd=15 .
There has been more than enough evolutionary time to estabilsh equilibria during the agriculture phase (5ky), probably also during the industrial phase (150y), but not yet enough during the info phase (50y).
And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
The predominant method of roasting peanuts changed in the 80's to a faster, higher-temperature process that changes the protein profile of the resulting peanut products. Most people don't seem to have a problem with this.
I don't know of a good study comparing the two (or how one could ethically design such a study).
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Mod parent up. There is no scientific data to his theory but it's a theory that's worthy of gathering new bits of scientific data.
Geeks are not more likely to have autistic kids.
- but there is a very high probability that they will have kids that are indistinguishable from autistic kids.
Most of the brilliant minds in human history were just this side of sanity. Almost all of them exhibited signs of classic mental disorders. Except maybe Tycho Brahe, but he died in a particularly manly way.
Engineer + engineer = autisim. Artist + artist = ADHD or bipolar or just plain nuts (my family.) Engineer + artist = gifted kid.
Too bad who you fall in love with has nothing to do with personality types or abilities.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
That's the conclusion, folks. Therefore, Julieanne Hough must dump Ryan Seacrest and date me. Julianne, call me.
> When Geeks Meet, Are They More Likely To Have Autistic Kids?
I'd assume that they'd have to have sex first.
From my experience, the more Conservative the family, the higher chance they will have an autistic kid. All of the people with autism that I have known came from very religious and conservative families. Of course, that is from my limited perspective in a conservative area of the country.
I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
It's a real thing. I have a cousin who runs a day care and she says that the number of kids she deals with who are allergic to peanuts has exploded from practically nothing in the last 5-10 years. She says if some of them even smell a peanut they could go into a coma.
Me and my friends ate tons of peanuts when we were kids, and never heard of peanut allergies...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The main problem with the research is the sample selection. He is comparing autistic SMART children against normal AVERAGE-Intelligence populations. No wonder the autistic kids seem smarter.That skewed selection is devastating if you wish to draw actual conclusions about autism and usefulness for intelligence.
So, why are we just looking at engineer fathers? The premise states both parents, but the focus seems to be on the dads. Darn it, I know there aren't many of us, but women engineers do exist.
For crying out loud. How many times do we see this? I think it has to do with more educated people being older when they have their first child and nothing to do with their personality.
It's the age that is important. Higher educated geeks tend to have children later in life.
They really didnt separate them out from other slow learners. Now there is a chance you can develop targeted therapies then like iPad communicators shown on 60 Minutes.
Hasn't this been done to death?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/24/1948238/could-assortative-mating-explain-autism
Come on.
Wow, that's an incredibly interesting fact. The only ethical way of doing such a study is to grab a large sample of people who are not known to have a peanut allergy. Then, when people in each group have a reaction, it's not your fault.
Data is on /.?
...that engineers are smarter than doctors. Well, we all knew that.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
First, there are more than one type of autism. And they may have different kind of causes and even multiple triggers. Second, in Asperger syndrome cases they found out that elevated levels of testosterone during pregnancy can cause Asperger, especially with male embryos.
Another aspect is, the more people look for a special dysfunction, the more they find. This is one cause why there are more autistic kids found in academic families then elsewhere. Especially mild cases of autism are not recognized by teachers and parents who have no diagnostic background or who do not search for typical symptoms.
Wow. Where did you grow up? I was in a Minnesota suburb and I knew two kids with peanut allergies and two "retarded" (probably autistic) kids. Hyper activity was rampant and ritalin was passed around like Pez. Holy crap but you guys lead precious little lives.
Re: the peanut allergy: that was because in your day, they were all dead already.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Saying they could go into a coma is not the same thing as actually going into a coma. I'm sure there are kids (actually parents) that think they're allergic, but are exposed every day. My first grader brings peanut butter & jelly sandwiches to lunch weekly, as do many other kids. None of the kids are 'careful' not to wave their sandwiches around - hell they throw food like kids do. No one's ever had a coma, or any freaking reaction whatsoever.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
On the plus side, it could result in more software QA people.
Oh I knew lots of kids with other problems, (and grew up in the heyday of ADD overdiagnosis as well) but peanut allergies weren't one of them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sauce? I expect you're correct, but do you have a source for the change-in-roasting-method claim? I think ethical design would be similar to allergy tests now. Small samples on skin of consenting adults and all.
I'm pretty sure even geeks have to do more than meet in order to have kids, let alone autistic ones.
I can't condone studies that perpetuate a stereotype at the expense of a vulnerable group.
Quite
can you imagine the PC crowd if it read "when Muslims meet they are more likely to have terrorist children"?
When I was in elementary school in the late 80s/early 90s, there were usually 0-2 kids (out of 30-35) in my class each grade that had to take some kind of medicine for hyperactivity. At least one of them I remember specifically it was pretty clear when he hadn't taken his medicine that he literally couldn't sit still in his chair.
When I was a kid, I had so much energy that I could not sit still *at all*. I had to jump in place, *perpetually*, in order to stay in one spot long enough to receive a complete sentence of instruction. Not that it helped much...if a TV was playing in the next room the dialogue would grab my attention away halfway through what was being said.
When they diagnosed me with ADHD and put me on drugs, it was like magic. Overnight I became a functional, relatively normal kid. I also went from failing to being an A-student. I am not exaggerating.
While it is true that ADHD is a widely overused diagnosis, it is also true that authentic cases exist.
Incidentally, I don't need the drugs anymore. The doctor said that people can outgrow the disorder. I remember someone saying (don't remember if it was the doctor) that the drugs can "train" the nervous system to the point where they are no longer needed. I don't know if that is true or not. However, I do still have strange reactions to some common drugs. Like (nobody believes this until they see it) caffeine makes me tired. A cup of coffee will actually make me crash. I am told this is common among authentic ADHD cases, but I don't know if that is true.
As I told an earlier poster, I'm pretty sure a pattern of kids dropping dead after trying peanut butter for the first time would have been spotted *long* before the 90's. When a kid dies suddenly, doctors and medical examiners make a pretty major effort to find out why.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When discussing the supposed link between autism and the Bay Area, perhaps people should consider that it is a giant pit of mercury. During the Gold Rush "quicksilver" mines sprung up everywhere, particularly in South Bay/Santa Clara (i.e., Silicon Valley). The mercury was also haplessly spread around in the gold mining process. To this day, there are signs all over the place---parks, hiking trails, creeks, etc.---warning of mercury contamination. But before modern regulations, Silicon Valley was a giant orchard, probably producing mercury-laden fruit, but who knows (no one was keeping track).
The link between mercury-stabilized vaccines and autism has been debunked, but mercury itself does cause all kinds of neurological disorders (mad as a hatter and all that), particularly in utero, and including autism. I am not suggesting that there is a link, only asking if anyone knows of any study that has posed the question or even taken it into account in studies about autism in the Bay Area. My anecdotal evidence suggests that people immediately jump to the "computer nerds are autistic" conclusion, without considering that there may be other, historical factors at work.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it."
Fuck you. You have never had a kid with an allergy. My daughter is allergic to tree nuts (not peanuts), and we had never even *HEARD* of the hysteria. All we knew is that she ate a piece of candy at Xmas and blew up like a balloon, including difficulty breathing. She was four.
Yeah, it was all made up hysteria. Go fuck yourself and die.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
We didn't have them when I was a kid, either, but that is a sad and unfortunate thing.
In decades and centuries past, many disorders were not understood, not diagnosed and just attributed to stupidity, or rebelliousness, or negative character traits. Those people just failed or succeeded as best they could on their own -- mostly they failed. In the case of allergies many of them just died.
These disorders are fundamentally no different from, say, presbyopia. They have a mixture of congenital and environmental causes, and they are debilitating to those who have them. Centuries ago, people who were near-sighted just had to suffer with their "weak eyes". Medical science now has multiple options to correct that defect, via prosthetics or surgical alterations. The same applies to these "newer" disorders, except that we're only beginning to understand them and how to treat them.
I have ADD, as do my three boys (one is also hyperactive; ADHD). Actually, they all have more severe forms of it than I do. I recognize in them the same difficulties I had in school when I was a kid... with the difference that they take medications which reduce the impact of their ADD making it far easier for them to excel in school. Those who think such kids are "drugged dull" don't know anything about it; most ADD medications are stimulants. In fact, I've realized that I self-medicate for my ADD, too, except that I do it with caffeine rather than Concerta.
An even better personal example is my daughter, who suffers from a mental illness that has only been recognized in the last couple of decades (and we now know is very poorly named): Borderline Personality Disorder. In the past, people would just have said she's a bitch (actually, lots of people say that today), but we now understand that it is actually a severe emotional disregulation disorder. On the surface it looks like extreme, random bitchiness, but when you understand the nature of the disorder you begin to see the patterns and to understand the reasons and the triggers -- and to have some compassion for the fact that as much as it sucks to be around her, it really, really sucks to be her. In fact, more than 25% of people diagnosed with BPD do not survive to age 30, mostly because they kill themselves (she's been hospitalized multiple times for attempts).
What makes this even more interesting is that as I look back in my family history it becomes clear that there have been others who suffered from BPD. They all led utterly miserable lives, and about half of them suicided. But no one understood what it was; they just thought it was a character defect.
Today, we are beginning to understand it, and beginning to realize that it's not particularly rare. Many of the extreme assholes you run into really are just sick... and there are some treatments that can help.
From a pure Darwinian perspective, you can argue that all of this medical intervention is a bad thing; that these people should just fail, or die. I disagree. Just as I appreciate the fact that I can wear glasses to address my presbyopia, and use caffeine to help me concentrate, I appreciate that we are learning to remove handicaps from many capable and brilliant people.
An experience that has cemented my perspective on this is getting to know many of the other girls in my daughter's treatment center. The treatment center handles teens with both behavioral health and substance abuse problems -- and actually it turns out that substance abuse is most often an attempt to self-medicate for an underlying mental or emotional health disorder. This was a 24-hour residential treatment facility, so all of the kids there were pretty hard cases; they ended up there after repeated behaviors that were deadly dangerous to themselves and/or others, or after major run-ins with the law or (usually) both. They were also mostly kids with pretty good parents.
What I was surprised to find after getting to know a lot of them was that they were also, almost wi
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
SIDS is still a big mystery, but since they started restricting peanut allergens in schools, the rate has dropped by about half.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Don't forget the various "sensory integration disorders" or whatever the fuck they call them. We have acquaintances whose kids supposedly have these disorders; as far as I can tell, the parents use it as an excuse to allow their children to behave like little asshole monsters. It's okay that he stole your shoes and punched your dog, he's got a disorder. A bunch of fucking bullshit is what that is.
As soon as these wimp-fuck parents get the slightest difficulty with their children behavior they race to the doctor to have him "diagnosed," i.e. receive a "doctor's note" giving them the OK to be shitty parents.
The reason that the proportion of autistic children in educated families is higher is because they're more likely to insist on a diagnosis of "being on the autistic spectrum" rather than accept that their kids are stupid anti-social little arses.. In the immortal words of Tom Lehrer it's a disease of the rich.
Your uneducated manual worker will just kick the little fucker out ASAP and get on with his life rather than moaning about how his precious snowflake is "different".
I don't deny there is genuine autism, it's just lost in the fog of pushy middle class twats getting their snotty brats sent to special schools because they like to skive off school and scream when a teacher tells them off.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Best to include a control group in your study that would expose subjects to the "old way" of roasting peanuts, whatever that is. Then we'd know for sure. :)
that's teh shizzle bizzle
You owe me a keyboard. Mine has coffee in it now.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
> And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
One could make the conclusion that life-threatening peanut allergies are more common than they used to be. Or you could go with massive media/scientific/medical conspiracy, because diagnosing someone whose airway has closed from anaphylaxis is, like, totally subjective.
Autism diagnosis is expensive and kids are usually screened for it first. The tests for screening contain questions like 'does the kid exhibit socially awkward behavior' or 'exhibit odd or repetitive behaviors', and similar traits that would be more associated with engineers and scientists than, say, people in marketing or HR. If there's more false positives due to the screening (I'd be positive, hopefully a false positive), and an evenly distributed number of false positives on the diagnosis, then it will follow that fathers of children with autism are more likely to be engineers. The statement was not 'engineers are more likely to have children with autism', and perhaps this subtlety is the explanation for the bias in their results.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Geeks don't need to mate, just meet, in order to have kids? So why are there so many idiot out there?
And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
So it's totally not real then, amirite armchair scientist?
In my graduating class in highschool, we had a girl who was so allergic to peanuts, minute traces would cause her body to swell all over. But that was nothing -- her little brother (who was in my younger sisters graduating class) is so allergic to peanuts, a very small amount can kill the poor kid. No one in his class during grade school could bring peanut butter for lunch lest they risk killing him accidentally.
All this proves is that more parents are reporting to daycare providers that their children deathly allergic to peanuts. I've heard it before. The question is whether the incidents of children who are truly that allergic to peanuts (to the point of coma) has increased or parents whose children have mild peanut allergies have been led to believe they are OMGDEATHLYSERIOUS or at least tell other people it is that severe.
That was implied by saying "each group." I'm too lazy to expand my text beyond that.
I've only read two of his books, but yes, assortative mating has been a feature of his work going back to the 90's. I agree that his claims overshoot the evidence thus far, but I think he's onto something all the same. As you say, the linkage between genes and behavior is fraught with complexity, but there are a couple of mitigating factors in this case.
First, autism's hallmark is a lack of empathy/interest/understanding toward other people. While such behavior is obviously influenced by a myriad of genetic and environmental factors, it's not hard to imagine that a handful of genes could have a major impact on the overall system.
Second, it's easy to see "geekiness" as a mild form of this inability to "get" social cues and understand/empathize with others. And life experience clearly shows that "geeky" classmates tend to band together, simply because they are the only ones that can understand and cope with each other's awkward foibles.
Third, it's not hard to imagine a handful of genes that could predispose one toward greater interest or fascination with systems and structures. Nor is it hard to imagine that when two such people meet, they will tend to "hit it off" quite readily. In fact, due to previous experience with social awkwardness, a pairing like this may be MUCH more likely to result in offspring. So although these traits may be "fuzzy" and rare, they could nevertheless have a positive feedback bias when paired with others of a similar type.
Fourth, in the old days, such awkward/geeky people didn't get much chance to reproduce. But now in the internet age, they have a much greater chance of finding a partner, and are more likely to end up with a similarly geeky one.
Baron-Cohen doesn't claim that this is the only cause of autism, but it makes sense. And although we don't understand how it works yet, there does seem to be a statistical trend behind the theory.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It seems they constitute socium-trolling business ...
I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
We asked my kid's allergist about that once. He told us there were a few prevailing theories as to why food allergies have increased recently. One is that there were a bunch of really nasty viruses that went around about 100 years ago and the genetics that predisposed people to survive them may be related to the genetics for allergies. The other is that the average person now gets zero parasites in a year, where the normal used to be about 12 parasites a year for most people. Maybe a lack of parasites leads to our immune system incorrectly believing some food is bad. The stats certainly don't lie however, there are a lot more people with potentially lethal food allergies than there used to be.
They are more likely to have hypochondric kids? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose they are moke likely to have kids with hypochondric parents who do not have a clue what autism really is. Hint: It is not exactly the same as being afraid of girls or being too lazy to leave your mom's basement.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
My sons was diagnosed with autism, all of his traits are the same things I do (I'm an engineer). He don't make eye contact, he doesn't play with toys as they toy was designed, and he lines things up. I consider these all great traits; my mother says I was exactly the same. When I pointed this out to the psychologist they instantly asked me if I was an engineer. The problem is there is a ton of state and federal money for kids with disabilities. The more kids they diagnose the more money they get and the more important their job is. I recently found that the even if he gets better and meets all their requirements, they won't let him out of their classrooms because he might go into remission.
I can't believe you guys will listen to Ali G and Borat on neurology or genetics.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What about the saying "opposites attract"? I mean, my wife is pretty much my exact opposite, and we complement each other quite well. I can't imagine living with someone just like myself.
As I know a few kids with peanut allergies... you have a link or two that covers the roasting process/changes to the roasting process?
Not too far off the truth - Simon Baron Cohen is Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin.
Life-threatening peanut allergies are really rare but are definitely real, and I think the pattern has been known long before the 90's - maybe not to you, but certainly to specialists. It's just public awareness has increased, as well as cultural willingness to make accommodations for such individuals (who previously either died or were forced into home-schooling to prevent exposure).
The number of pirates is way down, too.
Let me guess: Your mommy always told you that you're very artistic when you were a kid?
Wow, that's an incredibly interesting fact. The only ethical way of doing such a study is to grab a large sample of people who are not known to have a peanut allergy.
But aren't those people almost guaranteed to not have an allergy to either method of roasting? Everybody eats peanuts, right, unless they don't like them?
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Sauce?
I recommend the satay.
I expect you're correct, but do you have a source for the change-in-roasting-method claim?
This isn't exactly it, but perhaps in the discussion or references:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674901535575
I don't quite recall the details - might have been that we used to fry more, and now do more dry-roasting, but I recall a temperature change as well.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
are geeks able to produce autistic children by just "meeting"?
I know my colleague, who is running one of the UW autism research projects, is particularly interested in both maternal and paternal risk factors, as relates to scientist/engineer avocations.
However, one of our major problems to date is that all the IQ scoring systems have major problems of usage, and this makes it harder to get a high enough p value of significance in statistical correlations for the various traits.
At this point, it's too early to say that this is in fact true (statistically significant).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...I must mention paceplace.org - they are an amazing team. it's not cheap or easy to transplant your family to Oregon for a week, but compared to what we've spent on ABA and OT and RDI etc etc, the time we spent with Eric and Kathi qualifies as nearly-infinite bang for the buck.
are geeks able to produce autistic children by just "meeting"?
Of course they aren't, they need a petri dish.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One other thing to note about peanut allergies is that, from a diagnosis/prevention standpoint, they are all treated as "Severe"
My son has a contact allergy to peanuts that causes a rash. it is not an anaphylaxis reaction, so, very much non-life-threatening. This being said, the allergist, and his pediatrician still prescribed epi-pens, and had the school treat it, for the purposes of preventing contact, as if it were a life-threatening anaphylaxis reaction.
my understanding of the reasons for this is 2-fold:
1) Peanut allergies, as a whole, are more likely to be life-threatening than many other food allergies.
2) Peanut allergies tend to increase over time, thus increasing the likelihood that his reaction could evolve into an anaphylaxis reaction after further exposures.
Now, we told the school that his treatment plan is "Diphenhydramine HCL (AKA Benedryl) & Observe, contact us"
The schools tend to treat all peanut allergies as life-threatening so that they can have uniform rules while dealing with hundreds of "Little smiling faces" rather than having to know "Johnny gets X, Bobby gets Y, Jane get Z... ad. nausium.)
I have no sources for either of the above, but those are my understandings
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
And, of course, any apparent degradation of society is, in fact, merely reporting increases resulting from social advances that are bringing better diagnoses to bear on long-existing problems.....
Sure...
Right...
A central problem in civilization is the sloppy way the social sciences assert influence on public policy.
When they like a hypothesis, they can use a single anecdote over a cocktail party in Washington D.C. and destroy millions of lives with "uniform law" enacted at the Federal level.
When they dislike a hypothesis they can charge "correlation doesn't imply causation" in the face of mountains of very high correlations supporting the hypothesis, and go from there to claiming that it should be illegal for any State to pass laws in accord with the hypothesis simply because the social scientist "community" isn't "satisfied" that the people of that State are supporting a "discredited" hypothesis. Of course, the social scientists can do this until the biosphere collapses into grey-goo in service of their pet beliefs because the only way to "prove" causality is a controlled experiment -- which the social scientists have, through Federal "uniform law" managed to prevent from ever occuring at the State level.
What is needed is a reformulation of the notion of human rights so that hypotheses in human ecology can be ethically tested despite the displeasure of "authorities" in academia or government. Its called "consent" for those who are into rape of the innocents.
This reformulation of human rights must be founded on one absolute:
The right to vote with your feet so you can assortatively migrate to territories shared by those with compatible hypotheses in human ecology -- and that means an end to all uniform law.
Voting in the ballot box should come in a distant second to the right to vote with your feet.
I bet Jenny McCarthy has something to say about that.
Actually, the number of pirates is way up.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Fourth, in the old days, such awkward/geeky people didn't get much chance to reproduce.
I don't think this is true. I think in the old days such people were much more likely to reproduce with a partner who is more "normal", though, because it was harder to find a mate with similar characteristics. Instead, they just found someone who was less desirable in other ways. For example, uglier.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
was that peanuts or penis... i knew a lot of girls that had penis allergies.
Which is odd, given that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome affects children under the age of 1. Not too many of them are in school. If this factoid is true, seems like it's either a coincidence, or there's a another common factor at work.
Our son is 'socially awkward'... Through the end of grade 4, had trouble making friends, was bullied, and acting up in school. We always knew he was bright but just didn't understand why he was socially 'different'. As a parent, it breaks your heart to see your little boy want so much to have a friend or two but be rejected at every attempt; and then to come home with another bullying story... After a year of psych-ed assessments, talking to a pediatrician, and his GP, and doing a _lot_ of reading, we ended up with a diagnosis. Our son is classified within the school system as 'gifted' with some minor tendencies towards ASD. While it doesn't mean what you are probably thinking, it does provide an explanation for his behavior... He's not interested in the same things his peers in his neighborhood school were interested in... He was generally speaking/acting above his pay-grade, and monopolizing the conversation. He can't read visual cues, or subtle facial expressions. In school, he doesn't finish assignments because he can't come to grips with doing 3 pages of subtraction/addition largely because he's been doing it since he was 3. So he was bored, and acting out. I see a lot of myself in him... I did mediocre to poor at school because nobody paid attention to the fact that I just 'got' stuff and didn't need it hammered into my thick skull; I was bored and so turned into the class hyperactive clown... This served me ok in grade school but then I got to University and discovered that my lack of study skills, inability to take notes, and inability to understand how I needed to learn, caused me to need to abort my post-sceondary education...
My son is now in a school for gifted children. It doesn't mean they're teaching them nuclear physics in grade 5; it just means he has a slightly enriched program in the areas in which he is strong (language, verbal, written, research, math, music) but he is also being taught how his brain is wired and what he needs to do in order to use it effectively. After his first day at the new school, he came home excited because he'd made 6 new friends, and that he'd met "his people". He no longer has tummy aches and headaches every day (stress), and is now the happy child he should be.
So you might think this shit is ridiculous, but this diagnosis has led to a better understanding of our son, and has turned his life around. Both his mother and I had very similar school experiences, and we wish we'd had someone pay attention to what was going on in our brains...
You were probably the bully, weren't you?
Nah - they step into the bedroom and shout 'fork!'.
"has autism spectrum disorder/Asperger's," etc. shit has gotten ridiculous."
Five words come to mind: Big Pharma Profits, and, Academic funding.
Over at EurekAlert is a summary of some new autism research. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uom-rra103111.php The summary says ... "Research reveals autistic individuals are in fact superior in multiple areas. Scientists must stop emphasizing autistics' shortcomings." This guy is saying that our society is diverse enough that there are niches for autistics to fill which fit their skills well. I'm not sure if he's saying that this is new because of how different our society is compared to our deep past. Maybe autistics would have been eaten or starved in the deep past.
hahahaha that's fucking brutally trollish. awesome +1 Troll
Really rare? I know 3 people (my brother and 2 friends from high school) who would die in short order after eating a pbj without immediate medical intervention (within minutes).
In addition, they are white, south-Indian, and Filipino, so it's not like it's a genetic cluster or something. More common than you'd think.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
By school, I was including day care. Lots and lots are in daycare from 6 mos.
But yes, that is almost certainly coincident and not causal, and rather actually related to the 'back to sleep' campaign instead.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And I don't recall meeting a single kid that had a "peanut allergy" before a public hysteria began over it.
Ah, the days before anti-bacterial soaps and overuse of antibiotics.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Yes, and it only just now occurred to me that she's British!
... produce a socially inept child... Well, d'uh... That would be surprising if it weren't so obvious... Just more BS propagated by people with an agenda... Not sure what the agenda is because I haven' t really looked into it, but "follow the money" is always a good place to start. So if they are advocating money to go to something, or a program, or want taxpayers dollars to flow into it - that is their agenda. Really simple to filter out the B*llsh*t by using that simple filter...
It's great to see that others out there appreciate the benefit that recognition of these issues has brought us.
I have personally experienced a lot of these things through my childhood as well, and it's a bit frustrating when others say these issues aren't real, etc.
As I am on the spectrum (aspergers), and also ADHD, I've consistently had issues maintaining jobs and personal organisation. A little help from others and some medication (prozac for anxiety problems, ritalin for focus) has made such a massive difference in my quality of life it's incredible.
Looking back at my family tree, I too see the issues sprinkled throughout, and with modern help those people would have lived happier, more productive lives.
Even now, aspergers is likely underdiagnosed (especially in women, because we're less likely to fit the aspie stereotypes) and ADHD is generally misunderstood.
ADHD doesn't always mean trouble makers; for many it just means it's too hard to stay focused, too easy to be distracted, or too difficult to be motivated to do things you *really* need to do.
If these things can be fixed with relatively minor medical intervention, then why wouldn't you?
Often I wouldn't even say ADHD and ASD issues are specifically negative, they have positives too (though severe autism is hard to deal with). The biggest issues tend to be around dealing with NT (neuro-typical) people.
I hope that in the future understanding of these differences increases and people stop with this "we didn't have that xx years ago" stuff. I'm glad these things are recognised now. Most people impacted by them are.
It's a good thing I married myself a dumb one. For the children, of course.
What's that, dear? Who *is* Anonymous Coward? Why, I guess we'll never know...
I can imagine,. Amphetamine withdrawal sucks...
When geeks meet, their kids are sure as fuck more likely to end up with hyphenated names!
When I was a kid, Autism meant Savantism and Rain Man. When I was a kid, Hans Asperger's research was still in the form of obscure papers in German. When I was a kid, there was no explanation as to why I was so isolated from my peers, despite (or possibly because of) my increasingly desperate efforts. There was no explanation as to why I couldn't hear the conversation I was in in a noisy room while everyone else was chatting happily, or why I had to fight the urge to panic in shopping centers, or why I had so much difficulty managing my time, or why I was so badly affected by bright lights, or why I'd so easily reach a point where I couldn't handle company for one more moment, and when the ability to speak words retreated beyond a wall of effort.
Strangely, just because the name for it didn't exist when I was a child, that doesn't mean I'm not an Aspie. And I was then, too. It's just that even I called it "being that stupid geek in the corner whom no-one wants to talk to, and never tries hard enough, and is smart but lazy, and is a complete failure at being a functional human being."
Personally, I'd prefer to let Autistic children avoid the decades of confusion, suffering and depression that I went through. If that means that the detection rates of Autistic children are higher than you think they should be (expert on the subject as you obviously are), then so be it.
But thanks for your insight and concern.
Geeks who marry other geeks have higher probability of having autism kids.
Woman who give birth to child after 35 years old have higher probability having autism kids.
The truth: Having both situation means MUCH HIGHER probability of family stability and financial security. Engineers are paid more compare to other occupation, and woman who married late probably have established careers.
I would take family and financial security over the risk of having autism kid at any time.
Wonder why there is very few autism and ADHD in Asia? "Tiger-Mom" tactics are very effective on these children, that's why.
New Economic Perspectives
Maybe that is because peanut oil wasn't used in the production of antibiotics back then. Maybe because antibiotics were not in the vaccines. Maybe because kids 40 years ago were given 5 doses of vaccine, not 69. And lets all ignore the lack of autism among never vaccinated kids. Yes, lets. Because that keeps the FDA, CDC, AMA, AAP and WHO employees seeing the high dividends and profits from trading their pharma-stocks.
When you were a kid they didn't give 38 vaccines either. You may have had 10 at the most.
This is at least 2-year-old science. It might even have been 3 years ago I was reading this in a journal.
I've always been socially awkward. I didn't really have any friends in school, I was bullied from grade 1 to 9. The boys in my class played soccer and liked fighting, I preferred sitting in the library, the only place where I could find peace.
Even though I have most of the same things you mention, I'm not claiming that I have any kind of disorder. I'm just a geek, and that's who I am. If a doctor offered me some kind of medication that would make me just as out going as e.g. my mother, I would say no. Because that would make me no longer me.
Nowadays, I work as a software developer. I can talk with colleagues just fine, preferably on technical subjects, I'm usually the one explaining stuff to less experienced developers, even though we have other developers with more experience than me. Apparently I'm better at explaining things - some even say I should have been a teacher.
When I go home, however, I do keep to myself. I don't generally like people, and I prefer when nothing unexpected happens (people behave unexpectedly all the time). I spend most of my (non-sleeping) time in front of my computer, reading webcomics, arguing on usenet, writing on forums, downloading pr0n (that takes a lot of time), playing games, etc.
Yet, I don't claim to have some kind of disorder. I'm just me, and that's the way I am.
... or more likely, miscarried when their mother ate a snickers bar, possibly before she even realised she was pregnant.
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
Because a child observer from that period is the perfect witness to notice these things. Trust me, all this stuff and more was around in the 90's while you were on the playground.
After coming in contact with one, they would swell up, and suffer hours of pain?
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
they got the causation wrong - it's because geeks are more likely to vaccinate their children :)