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Huge Survey Shows Correlation Between Autistic Traits and STEM Jobs (cam.ac.uk)
Bruce66423 writes: A survey of more than 450,000 people in the UK has shown there is a significant correlation between a higher score on the Autism Quotient and being a scientist or engineer. AQ scores are also higher for men than for women. "On average, the male AQ score was 21.6, compared to a female score of 19.0. People work in a STEM-related job had an average AQ score of 21.9 compared to a score of 18.9 for individuals working in non-STEM jobs. This suggests autistic traits are linked to both sex and to having a ‘systems-thinking’ mind." A professor involved with the work said, "These may shed light on why we find males in the population on average have slightly more autistic traits than females do, and why fathers and grandfathers of children with autism are over-represented in STEM fields."
I would much rather we classify conditions such as autism by the extent that someone is unable to lead a full and prosperous life. Rather than get all tangled up with low-level biases that may or may not say something about the disability. All this study really shows is that personality types are attracted to certain jobs. It does not advance our knowledge of autism. What would have been really interesting is whether there is a change in score over time as people enter various careers - to more autistic traits emerge in people who code for a living.
The current hype around STEM jobs hides the fact that knowing people is still a much better way of being successful than knowing things. STEM jobs are like garbage pickup: It's very important that somebody does it, but you don't want your kids to end up doing the hard work for little money. Yes, I know that STEM jobs are considered well-paying, but with the same work ethic and intellectual ability that they require, one could easily make more money in other fields. An innate talent for science and technology, which appears to be correlated with mild autism spectrum disorders and thus a much lower chance of getting along with people, is as much an evolutionary advantage as being on the other end of the bell curve: The world works best for the people in the middle, not for the outliers.
Non-STEM people just can't concentrate because they have the attention span of a gnat, that's why they call the thinkers autistic.
Where autistic men tend to latch onto trains, or other similar obsessions, many of the autistic women I've known have, at some point in their lives, become fixated on social interactions. The result is, with a lot of effort, they can be quite socially functional, albeit a little bit peculiar. This probably also skews the results of the test.
The CDC says that you are absolutely wrong. Autism is 5x more common in boys (interestingly, this is rather close to the male/female STEM ratio).
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
Yes. This is one reason programmers and gamers resent the suggestion that they're misogynistic: They treat everybody the same.
Just because it's not the way women want to be treated doesn't make it misogynistic.
I'm diagnosed with Aspergers, and I don't generally want to upset people. I've managed it with complete accidental ease. I mix with people that don't worry about the oddities and give me credit for my skills and abilities, instead of crying about those I lack.
Others are less accepting. They can stay the fuck out of my profession.