According to research theres different genes involved in those diagnosed as young children to those diagnosed later in life and certainly those of us who were diagnosed as adults. The research states that theres no one cause of autism and that multiple genes are involved.
There's an article on it in todays Guardian newspaper.
I did see this, but looked at the research paper, and what they said about sample sizes says it all. The usual suspects - 'limited size', 'mostly male' in the young group, and a lack of understanding of what the older diagnosed might have been like when they were young due to the knowledge gain over the years. It felt like another flimsy theory as unless they do a proper study of significant size and exam all factors, it felt like another false start. The problem being it's mostly pharmaceutical companies fund research if they think they can sell something at the end, and if you can't rewire brains they have no impetus to find out.
Smaple sizes in these sort of studies has always been a problem, it's one of the reasons why I like Gina Rippon's, The Gendered Brain so much, as she looks so closely at sample sizes and their make up. It's a problem with medical research in general, they always seem to end up with young white men, nobody wants to give untested drugs to children for obvious reasons, women get excluded because of menstral cycles making things "difficult", many minorities don't trust researchers not to be racially motivated. Although why they should exclude anyone who's not a young white male from studies on things like autism I really don't understand.
women get excluded because of menstral cycles making things "difficult"
This is an unfortunate issue where it makes it so much harder for scientists to establish their measurements on a person who is constantly going through a cycle of hormone fluctuations, physical symptoms and, often, changes in mood.
Children, especially during puberty, are likewise harder to baseline because of changes going on in their bodies that can skew test results.
From a scientific point of view there is too much happening there when compared to the more steady state of the adult male physiology,
I don't think of it as sexism as it is simply a way to establish if their theory using the most reliable baseline they can find. It does mean that men will be more often used as guinea pigs though for the same reason.
As for the white element, 82% of the UK population is white (source https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/ ) so it seems reasonable that the majority of test subjects are also going to be white.
I do note from the same link that the non-white population has grown by a third in the last 10 years so this seems to indicate that there will be more "other" participants in future.
From a scientific point of view there may well be a drive to test a more homogenous group of people (same sex, ethnic origin, approx age etc) to compare results before expanding if the results look promising.
women get excluded because of menstral cycles making things "difficult"
This is an unfortunate issue where it makes it so much harder for scientists to establish their measurements on a person who is constantly going through a cycle of hormone fluctuations, physical symptoms and, often, changes in mood.
Children, especially during puberty, are likewise harder to baseline because of changes going on in their bodies that can skew test results.
From a scientific point of view there is too much happening there when compared to the more steady state of the adult male physiology,
I don't think of it as sexism as it is simply a way to establish if their theory using the most reliable baseline they can find. It does mean that men will be more often used as guinea pigs though for the same reason.
As for the white element, 82% of the UK population is white (source https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/ ) so it seems reasonable that the majority of test subjects are also going to be white.
I do note from the same link that the non-white population has grown by a third in the last 10 years so this seems to indicate that there will be more "other" participants in future.
From a scientific point of view there may well be a drive to test a more homogenous group of people (same sex, ethnic origin, approx age etc) to compare results before expanding if the results look promising.
The problem with selecting young white men to research on is whilst scientists may have a flatter base line to start with, this dosent' reflect the general population who are the intended recipients of the research. At least 50% of the population are left out if you exclude women, and probably another big chuck when you exclude people with other conditions, then you've got the thorny issue of minorities. When such a small sample of the population is part of the research and research samples small to begin with, then how on earth can those results be extrapolated across a wider population?
I wasn't actually pointing out the young white men in research samples as an example of sexism, but of very limited thinking on the part of researchers. If you've not read The Gendered Brain, then I highly recomend you do so, as not only is it a good example of flawed research in terms of race and gender, but how so many very small studies are used to make massive generalisations. This isn't just in autism studies, but in other medical studies.
