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Autism Starts Months Before Symptoms Appear, Study Shows (scientificamerican.com)

A new study published this week in the journal Nature suggests there is evidence of autism in the brain well before symptoms start to appear. Typically, the earliest that children are diagnosed with the disorder is at the age of two, although often times it is even later. Scientists may now be able to detect the disorder well before a child's first birthday via a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Scientific American reports: Researchers conducted MRI scans on 150 children three times: at six months old, one year and two years. Just over 100 of the children were at high risk because they had an older sibling diagnosed with autism. The faster growth rate of the surface areas of their brains correctly predicted eight times out of 10 which of the high-risk children would go on to be diagnosed with the condition. Enlargement of the brain seemed to correlate with the arrival of symptoms, says Heather Hazlett, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina's Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD), and the paper's lead author. Still, with only 100 at-risk children, the study is too small to be considered definitive -- nor should doctors rush to use MRIs to diagnose autism, Hazlett says. But if the study results are confirmed in future research, it could offer a new option for screening high-risk children before their symptoms become obvious -- and possibly at a time when treatment will be most effective.

76 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Can't Be True! by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because that might mean that autism is already setting in before certain Eeeeeevil vaccines have been given.

    Of course those government vaccines may have secret alien time travel substances which go back to start the autism before they are administered. That seems most likely.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    1. Re:Can't Be True! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Seeing as how the parent poster pulled that 'fact' from their asshole, I'm not too sure you really want to request that citation.

    2. Re:Can't Be True! by JoshuaZ · · Score: 2

      It means that the vaccines are so bad that they are violating basic physics. Apparently vaccines can cause harm before they are even injected. Someone should talk to the physicists and let them know that the MMR vaccine contains tachyons.

    3. Re:Can't Be True! by quenda · · Score: 5, Funny

      vaccines may ... go back to start the autism before they are administered.

      Physicists have actually demonstrated this sort of thing is possible, using quantum entanglement contrary to common sense.

      You can actually have the past depend on the present, but the catch is that it cannot be used to transmit information back in time. Causality is not violated so long as the effects are not observed until after the cause.

      This is important: the very act of detecting autism with the MRI will break the quantum entanglement and stop the vaccine from causing autism.
      This may be a cure!

      (I hope there are still enough nerds on slashdot to appreciate this potential breakthrough.)

    4. Re:Can't Be True! by Zaelath · · Score: 2

      There is no ACTUAL EVIDENCE. You're on the wrong site. Go away.

    5. Re:Can't Be True! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is no ACTUAL EVIDENCE.

      Indeed. There is no evidence, and even if there was evidence, it would be meaningless, because even the hypothesis is invalid. The hypothesis was that the mercury based preservatives ( thimerosal) in some vaccines caused autism. There were a few reports of a correlation. Those reports were discredited, and the researcher was accused of fraud and lost his medical license. But even if there was evidence (there is not), it wouldn't matter because mercury based vaccine preservatives are no longer used.

    6. Re:Can't Be True! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Disregarding evidence based purely on an invalid hypothesis is bad science. Sometimes you may find evidence of something happening even though it's not what you were originally looking for. Let's say, hypothetically, that an overstimulated immune system at a young age might be able to trigger autism. If you are testing to see if the preservatives in the vaccine are triggering autism, and see a correlation, the hypothesis could be wrong but the evidence could still be useful.

      Disclaimer: I think the anti-vax movement is a load of nonsense. That doesn't excuse us from using bad science to discredit it.

    7. Re:Can't Be True! by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

      This is not true in any way. There are no known links. Stop spreading uninformed bullshit.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    8. Re:Can't Be True! by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1

      Because that might mean that autism is already setting in before certain Eeeeeevil vaccines have been given.

      Maybe we can use this to predict who's going to get vaccinations?

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    9. Re:Can't Be True! by mmell · · Score: 1

      There are also links that show marriage leads directly to divorce. 100% of all divorced couples were married first.

    10. Re: Can't Be True! by tbannist · · Score: 1

      The only "doctor" to have "evidence" of a link between any vaccine and autism lost his medical license because his evidence was fraudulent. Turns out, he never examined the patients in his "study", most of them didn't have autism, and he was being paid a shit-ton of money for the "evidence" by one of the competitors to the vaccine's he accused of causing autism.

      You have been played for a fool, but are too stupid to understand that.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    11. Re:Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Hey, why are you deriding the anti-vaxxers? They are just trying to make evolution work again (killing the stupid) and that is to be applauded, not ridiculed!

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    12. Re:Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is exactly one study that deserves the name, and it was not only proven to be based on manipulated data, it did only prove it for one specific vaccine, because the author stood to profit form an alternate vaccine that was to come out soon and would not have the autism-risk. So even the original study, faked as it may have been, does not actually support the claims the anti-vaxxers are making! These people must be complete demented and functionally illiterate. Or probably just so deep in fear that they have no rationality left and are jumping at every shadow. Because there are no "facts" supporting the vaccine-autism link.

      Science says it is strongly genetic factors and some environmental factors like some infections during pregnancy, and use of alcohol or cocaine during pregnancy. Vaccination is not one of them and it has been looked into extremely carefully. Nothing there. But I guess even if medicine will eventually reliably be able to predict the condition well before any vaccinations are done, the anti-vaxxers will cling to their baseless beliefs.

      Oh, wait, there is one link: The mother _not_ getting vaccinated before pregnancy does increase the autism risk for children. So not only are the anti-vaxxers completely wrong, their mistaken belief actually makes the problem worse.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    13. Re:Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. The whole idea is completely disconnected from reality. Not that these morons are the only ones. For example, a couple of billion people believe in some invisible man in the sky on "evidence" not any more solid.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    14. Re: Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Some AC claiming obvious nonsense on Slashdot without citation is now "evidence that cannot be disputed"? Pathetic. Please take your alternate facts and stuff them.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    15. Re: Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 2

      And it is even more: He was only "proving" that for one specific vaccine, because he wanted to promote another one without the risk that was to come out shortly (and earn him a pretty penny). So even the "original" faked study did not show what these morons think it did.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    16. Re:Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Are you sure about that? I call "Fake News"! (Or is it "Alternate Facts"? I get confused by these modern terms for "lying blatantly"...) If you dig deep enough, you will find people that were divorced because of clerical error that never were married! That completely disproves your claim! Obviously your claims have no link to reality!

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    17. Re:Can't Be True! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Excellent! And think of all the other good this could do!

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    18. Re: Can't Be True! by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 1

      I'd say "Pot, meet kettle.", but I think that would just involve you looking in the mirror.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
    19. Re:Can't Be True! by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I don't think that's the only hypothesis still floating. There are a few hypotheses that autism may be autoimmune in nature, and caused by the immune response to one or more vaccines - where parts of the brain itself becomes a target of those antibodies.

    20. Re:Can't Be True! by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      That was just goal post shifting. Once the mercury link was busted, the anti-vax groups claimed it was other compounds in the vaccines. When that was disproved, they went to generic "toxins" or "they get so many vaccines that their immune system is overwhelmed." Never mind that they can't name the "toxin(s)" that cause autism (if they keep it generic, you can't disprove it) or that a baby's immune system wards off hundreds of bacteria/viruses daily (if not more) and a few shots won't tip the scales. They'll keep shifting the "why" in their belief that vaccines cause autism instead of admitting that they have nothing to do with one another.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    21. Re:Can't Be True! by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      If this only affected their kids, I'd actually side with them and say vaccines should be a parent's choice. I'd still call not vaccinating the wrong choice, but it would be their choice. However, a parent who doesn't vaccinate their child weakens herd immunity and exposes other people to diseases. People who a) are too young to be vaccinated, b) can't be vaccinated for valid medical reasons, or c) were vaccinated but the vaccine didn't "take" (vaccines aren't 100% but herd immunity usually covers the fraction who don't get protected). When their actions negatively affect other people - including possibly killing them - they don't get to argue that it's their freedom to choose not to vaccinate and it goes beyond a "Darwin effect."

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    22. Re:Can't Be True! by omnichad · · Score: 1

      That one goes back to at least 2000. Just because the anti-vax group latched onto it doesn't make the science any less.

      Not toxins, though - antibodies intended by the vaccine. Have a look at PANDAS for another as-yet unproven disease that may be caused by ordinary antibodies.

      And these predispositions would likely be genetic - clearly you wouldn't eliminate the causative vaccine. Rather, you would do genetic testing before vaccinating - and allow for a medical exemption in any laws written mandating vaccines. That is, if any link is ever definitively established.

    23. Re:Can't Be True! by syntotic · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but it seems autism was redefined as... NOT HEARING VOICES. Which is NORMAL. It can be proven, argued. Next they will start saying the neocortex is a disease and language ability a nuisance: Guards! THAT MAN says he can COUNT!!!

  2. FAKE NEWS by DonaId+Trump · · Score: 4, Funny

    Believe me, folks, this study by so-called "scientists" is dead wrong. Anyone with a brain knows vaccines are what cause autism. I refused to have Barron vaccinated and look, he's the best at cyber, he's a huge cyber, he's going to be running the whitehouse.ru website.

    1. Re:FAKE NEWS by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      he's going to be running the whitehouse.ru website.

      Oh - Rule 34 alert! Whether or not it's a pr0n site, let alone a "tiny hands and hard sports" site, I don't know. But I'm seeing that domain linked to two addresses in 90.156.201.xxx

      No idea who is cybersquatting on it, but props for forethought and planning.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  3. Of course it does!!! by NeoStrider · · Score: 1

    You're kidding... really? I always thought that it didn't exist until the doctor told you that you had it... so they're tell us now that we all could just be undiagnosed. Noted!

    1. Re:Of course it does!!! by mmell · · Score: 1

      It does explain the current POTUS pretty well, doesn't it? No social or interpersonal skills to speak of, doesn't work or play well with others . . . a shame it wasn't caught when he was young.

  4. everything starts before symptoms appear by turkeydance · · Score: 4, Insightful

    even by a little bit

    1. Re:everything starts before symptoms appear by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      The actual article is about how they can detect autism before symptoms start.

      That could already be done. Autism can be predicted by extracting stem cells, and prompting them to grow into little bundles of nerve cells. If each neuron has fewer than a normal number of connections, that person is predisposed to develop autism. A higher than normal number of neural connections correlates with Williams Syndrome, which is sort of "inverse-autism", with a high level of empathy and social engagement, but an astonishing inability to reason quantitatively.

    2. Re:everything starts before symptoms appear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This article says the autistic brains are bigger and therefore I assume have more neural connections. Autism is an evolutionary advance and the neurotypicals are too stupid and backward to see it.

    3. Re:everything starts before symptoms appear by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      This article says the autistic brains are bigger and therefore I assume have more neural connections.

      I don't see any reason to assume that. Autism is correlated with fewer connections per neuron, so there could still be more total neurons. There is also a lot of white matter in brains that can add a lot of volume without adding to the number of connections.

    4. Re:everything starts before symptoms appear by globaljustin · · Score: 1

      Autism is an evolutionary advance

      hmm...I'd give you "competitive advantage in some cases" but "evolutionary advance"...

      evolutionary advances are not seen on 100 year timescales

      also, whatever change must increase the ability to reproduce for it to be related to evolution

      --
      Thank you Dave Raggett
    5. Re:everything starts before symptoms appear by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      I think fractured bones may push this statement to its breaking point.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  5. This is news? by Egg+Sniper · · Score: 1

    Though autism probably isn't one consistent, monolithic thing, it's long been suspected that one's autistic fate is potentially sealed before birth. A quick search yields: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

    1. Re:This is news? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Or more accurately, symptoms can't be detected until months after.

  6. Not likely to help diagnosis by Chalnoth · · Score: 1

    Autism has a prevalence of (very roughly) 2%. If the MRI test falsely diagnoses children without autism as being autistic 20% of the time, then roughly 90% of all people who test positive will not be autistic. You might be able to get a little bit better by only screening at-risk children (e.g. family history of autism), but this is still going to be wildly inaccurate and what would even be the point? It's not like parents have to do anything differently until the symptoms of autism present themselves.

    But it is nice to see more evidence that autism is in evidence long before symptoms appear, because it makes nonsense of many of the claims of bullshit artists that vaccines cause autism.

    1. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by BigDukeSix · · Score: 3, Informative

      With respect, you have missed the point (completely). This isn't about finding a screening test. This is an objective, likely quantitative readout from a standard imaging study that can be used as an endpoint in clinical trials. Most clinical trials in this area fail because they use some sort of subjective behavioral scoring system, rather than a quantity that can be measured (with a very expensive ruler) from the patient. And ... 2% of the population? That's a fucking wet dream for a big pharmaceutical company. This finding has the potential to take autism from the realm of voodoo into a treatable clinical entity.

    2. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      It doesn't usually work like that. The FDA is (quite rightly) suspicious of putative surrogate measures in clinical trials. It takes a lot of work to actually get something like an imaging metric accepted as a surrogate and validated as a primary outcome, and very few have been.

      This study provides clues about what exactly autism is and when it starts. Its interesting scientifically, and having something you can image will help immensely for scientific studies, just as you describe.

    3. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by gweihir · · Score: 1

      And that was no the point, at least not directly. It is just one more piece of the puzzle, and it means you can start firming up a diagnosis way earlier. Of course you cannot use a single test that has a high probability of error, but it helps as part of a set of tests. Statistics 101.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    4. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by ckatko · · Score: 1

      Imagine all the healthy babies aborted because they thought they had autism.

    5. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      If the MRI test falsely diagnoses children without autism as being autistic 20% of the time, then roughly 90% of all people who test positive will not be autistic.

      According to the abstract, only 12% of those tested positive were not later diagnosed as autistic. You're just making argument over nonsense numbers, when the real numbers are available.

    6. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by RandyHill · · Score: 1

      There is no such thing as "autism", there is a number of different behaviors on the autistic spectrum. The study references the spectrum, but I'm not going to spend $32 to find out which behaviors they correlated with.

      Example: My daughter was diagnosed as Autistic at age 3 & 1/2, she was given a 13 point test by a psychologist, and she scored over on 7 of the tests (I think scoring over on 6 is considered autistic), but she was barely over on those. She was given the test because her vocabulary had started to decline precipitously once she turned three. She's had 5 years of ABA therapy, was in special ed until mainstreaming in 3rd grade, and now making the honor roll in 4th.

      I always felt she had a good opportunity to recover, given that she only evidenced about half the behaviors and didn't measure highly autistic on any of the behaviors she evidenced. Would this test have detected her autism, or would it not be severe enough? Would it detect autism in kids who later only evidence 3 or 4 of the traits? False positives is a big issue, because parents can get crazy about this stuff.

    7. Re:Not likely to help diagnosis by RandyHill · · Score: 1

      You both aren't understanding the abstract. The abstract says it has a "positive predictive value" of 81%, that's the number of diagnoses that turn out to be true. Sensitivity was 88%, that's the percent of autistic kids detected by the test.

      So if a population has 2% autistic rate, and you ran this test on 1,000 children, 20 kids will later turn out to be autistic, and a Sensitivity rate of 88% says that somewhere between 17 and 18 will have been detected by the test. The positive prediction value says that for every 4 correctly identified as autistic, slightly more than 1 child will be falsely identified as autistic, in 1,000 kid example that means around 5 falsely identified.

      As I said elsewhere, autism isn't really a thing, it's actually autism spectrum disorders, and it's a range of behaviors. My daughter was diagnosed with 7 out of 13 behaviors and was barely into the autistic scale on the behaviors she evidenced. Still it was enough for her to have lost most of her social skills in less than a year. The question is what spectrum disorders is this test predicting and how accurately for each one?

  7. Treatment by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    It is nice to diagnose, but without treatment, what will the outcome be?

    1. Re:Treatment by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

      Older men also have a higher incidence of Autism in their offspring so that means you have to limit men as well.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    2. Re:Treatment by Whatsisname · · Score: 1

      Science moves one step at a time.

    3. Re: Treatment by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      Is there any treatment at all?

      There is a flavor of autism called "regressive autism" with symptoms that disapear with gluten and casein eviction. Apart than that I am not aware of any treatment.

    4. Re: Treatment by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      Diagnosis is a treatment in itself for this type of thing. The earlier and more certainly parents recognize this is a neurological issue and not just behavioral (or a result of vaccines, demonic possession, etc.) the less likely they are to treat their kids in a way that fucks them up further.

    5. Re: Treatment by RandyHill · · Score: 1

      yea, the gluten and casein eviction stuff is just nonsense, it's just another in autism's long history of quack treatments.

      What has been proven to work is ABA therapy and it's derivatives. But it's not a panacea, it's track record is about 50-50 on curing kids. My daughter was diagnosed at three and a half years, and after 5 years of ABA therapy she was mainstreamed in school and made the honor roll. We were able to discontinue therapy as she is pretty much normal now (though still quirky).

  8. Re:The Autistic Problem by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

    You sound like a horrible human being that would get hit by a bus tomorrow if karma existed.

    --
    Time makes more converts than reason
  9. Enlargement of the brain seemed to correlate... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a good time to bring back trepanation

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  10. bitztream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    bitztream claims he can detect autism just by looking at the parents in 3..... 2..... 1.....

  11. Salon: The Monster Inside My Son by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Salon has a great article on autism: The Monster Inside My Son!

    Scary stuff. The stuff of horror movies.

  12. Re: Evidence by hackwrench · · Score: 2

    Without a citation there is no indication that the evidence exists. And no you can't just Google it, because there are too many invalid results.

  13. Re:Arrow of time by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    The arrow of time is an illusion and if you make a video of atomic level events and play it forwards and then play it backwards, no one can tell you which is which.

  14. Re: The Autistic Problem by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Oh come on, everybody knows you just have to find the right autistic person for the job. Sure they like to overspecialize, but that just means that not just any one will do.

  15. Re:The Autistic Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just so. Autistic people don't do dishonest manipulative passive aggression. Autistic people do actual aggression. People who work well on certain tasks need to be treated as specialists and not assigned tasks outside of their specialty. As a manager you need to recognize that you can't assign random tasks to random people and expect people to respond to your capricious demands like interchangeable fleshbots. The problem is your utter lack of ability to manage properly the talents of the people working for you.

  16. Re:The Autistic Problem by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Ah, but you underestimate the power of the people who get their jollies from causing problems for others, for whom the autistic people are a valuable resource.

  17. Re:The Autistic Problem by globaljustin · · Score: 1

    These retards should have been aborted or smothered in their cradle.

    heh...wrong

    they need help to specialize in the right situation

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
  18. Re:Arrow of time by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    But at a higher level it's easy to see which direction time is moving. Why is that?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  19. Re:Arrow of time by gweihir · · Score: 1

    The best explanation we have is that the observer makes this happen. Hence without observer, both possible directions for time are valid. It is unclear how sophisticated the observer has to be, but a machine will not do.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  20. Re:No, Autism starts before symptoms are OBVIOUS. by gweihir · · Score: 1

    80% ain't great, though.

    It is something else you can use to get the reliability of the diagnosis up when you have a suspicion. And it helps understanding the process better, because it means you can study it earlier because there is a way to identify children that are reasonably likely to develop the condition. All in all a pretty good and helpful scientific result.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  21. Re:Arrow of time by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    heh.........so if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it still make a sound? Or does it 'fall' up?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  22. Re:Arrow of time by Place+a+name+here · · Score: 1

    I'd imagine the most likely explanation to be that the statistical probability of event x happening in the future given that y has happened in the past is not the same as the probability of y happening in the future given that x happened in the past; but at very small scales, the difference is too small to see at any small time delta.

    If so, try speeding up the video or yes, look at a higher level.

  23. Re:Arrow of time by JonnyCalcutta · · Score: 1

    'crash' si sekam ti esion eht ,seY

  24. Re:Arrow of time by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 1

    Primarily due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Events which increase entropy are vastly more likely than those that decrease entropy. So the Universe tends towards higher entropy. When the Universe reaches maximum entropy, i.e. heat death, no more change can occur, and time stops.

    The best analogy I've heard (stolen from a documentary I don't remember the name of), is to think of a sand castle. In a sand castle, the grains of sand are highly ordered into a very specific shape and structure. We can consider this as a state of low entropy. Any disturbance of this order, due to wind, the tide, someone stepping on it, etc., increases the disorder of the sand castle, reducing it ultimately to a pile of sand.

    The pile of sand is our state of high entropy. It's very difficult to increase the disorder of the pile of sand: no matter how much you mix it up, it will largely remain a pile of sand.

    There is nothing fundamental to the laws of physics that prevents the perfect combination of wind to come along and blow a pile of sand into the shape of a sand castle. But obviously such an event is incredibly unlikely, compared to all the ways the sand can be reduced back to a pile.

    Of course, it is possible to reduce the entropy of a system locally, but this requires external energy to be introduced, which will lead to a net increase in the Universe. Consider how much energy you have to expend to construct a sand castle, versus how much energy it would take some asshole to come along and kick it down.

    I guess what I'm saying is, building sandcastles is a waste of time.

    --
    Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  25. Age of Parents Correlates Heavily with Autism Rate by DatbeDank · · Score: 1

    The rise in autism correlates heavily with geriatric parents (ie men and women who have children after 35). There was a study done that highlighted such a correlation. Posting on mobile, otherwise i'd link directly to one.

  26. But ... by Gription · · Score: 1

    Disregarding evidence because of an invalid hypothesis isn't an issue. Unless you have a hypothesis it isn't science. A hypothesis is required.

    So toss out any invalid hypothesis and any "evidence" isn't evidence until you get a new hypothesis to test.
    Science.

  27. Re:Arrow of time by lifeisshort · · Score: 1

    So this https://uk.pinterest.com/rupert55/sand-art/ guy is basically wasting his time?

  28. Re:Age of Parents Correlates Heavily with Autism R by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Correlation is not causation. It's equally possible that thirty years ago parents at that age were the exception and aspies were regarded as nutters and just sent to play away from the normal kids.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  29. Re:Arrow of time by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Wrong question. The right question is whether a tree _can_ fall when nobody is around...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  30. Re:Arrow of time by quenda · · Score: 1

    The arrow of time is an illusion

    All our perceptions are simplifications - e.g. solid matter. An "illusion" is more like the opposite: seeing complexity when reality is simpler.

     

    make a video of atomic level events and play it forwards and then play it backwards, no one can tell you which is which.

    Doesn't entropy still apply at the atomic level. e.g. particle decay?
    Sure the maths (classical mechanics or wave function?) works both ways, but one is far more probable than the other.
    If I see a barium and krypton nucleus collide and fuse into a stationary U235 nucleus, you will not be able to persuade me that the film is not running backward.

  31. To all you worthless pieces of shit out there by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    How the hell can you claim that vaccines have no link to autism when not a single vaccine in history has been tested against a placebo?
    If you want to argue this fact show me one single study which used an actual placebo, not the adjuvant without the rest, an actual placebo.

  32. Re:Arrow of time by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

    It is unclear how sophisticated the observer has to be, but a machine will not do.

    Horseshit.
    In physics, an "observer" is just something that causes waveform collapse.
    Anything that absorbs energy at the given wavelength will do.
    It could be a person, a machine or a lump of coal.

    God, gweihir, you and your fantasy science.

  33. Re:Arrow of time by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

    Well said.