In this Debate paper, @HelenTager explores how to combat misinformation in child mental health with a focus on protecting the integrity of #autism research and practice in the United States. bit.ly/4bpa2G6 From @acamh's @TheCAMH

We love when autism is in the headlines, but we hate when it's misinformation. Join us in 3 weeks to tackle the misleading information about autism and stand confident in the facts. 🎟️: AdvancesInAutism30.eventbrit…

There is nothing wrong with having an intellectual disability. Too often, efforts to reduce stigma create distance from people with the highest support needs, as though intellectual disability is something lesser. An inclusive disability community values every kind of mind.

Want to improve your science literacy and critical thinking about controversies in autism? Join @NCSAutismOrg for our webinar, "What's the Proof?" this Thursday. Featuring Giacomo Vivanti and @AHalladay212 of @AutismScienceFd Register: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi…

Are Chinese people in Britain chased down the street for what Beijing does to Uighurs? Are Russians here hunted for Ukraine? Are Afghans attacked over how women are treated back home? No. But Jews are singled out, blamed, and targeted for Israel. The hypocrisy isn’t even subtle.

Excellent piece by @joshglancy Golders Green was our blessed plot. These attacks have poisoned the ground thetimes.com/article/3326c44…

I too grew up in Golders Green. I’m grateful for this eloquent piece that articulates what’s been on my mind over the last few days.

I thought I was autistic. I was wrong. I was 30 in 2019 when stories of women discovering they were autistic all along began appearing everywhere. They popularized a newer understanding of autism, with its own “female presentation.” It was framed as a scientific correction to a historical wrong against women, the kind of narrative the press finds irresistible. Like so many women, I felt immense relief when I was formally diagnosed. It offered an explanation for the mental health crises of my youth and the daily realities of my adult life. Then I spent a year in the online autism community. What I saw there, especially the way activists treated parents of severely impaired children, turned me into a critic of neurodiversity. But it was becoming a journalist in 2022, after discovering detransitioners’ stories, that forced me to question narratives about identity and diagnosis, including my own. Journalism also required the social skills autism says I should have lacked. From there, the rest unraveled: many traits I had come to associate with autism are not uncommon in the general population, but through the “female autism” framework, they looked like a meaningful pattern. I don’t think my story is unique. The same incentives that kept my diagnosis intact may also help explain why so many women are entering the autism category in adulthood. Read my first article for @thefp: thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-…

Kudos to the Telegraph! The first major newspaper to call the Emperor naked.

I did provide peer review! Overridden by the editors

I just proofread my letter to AR on the Commentary so hope to see others there too

I know! I have been trying to push back on this trend which is as insidious and dangerous as RFKJr and his war on autism science. Some days I just despair

“I have no more earth to cling to” 🎗️ Yosef Wiener, a Holocaust survivor who lost his grandson Yahav, his granddaughter Hadar, and her husband Itay on October 7th, has passed away. Before his passing, he wrote these inconceivable words: "My name is Yosef Wiener, and I am 97 years old. I was saved from the fire of the Nazi beasts; my entire family was annihilated in that terrible inferno. I was severed from my deep roots, and I erected a monument of basalt stones in their memory. Out of total exhaustion, out of despair, while drowning, I clung to the earth and planted myself in Zion. I married Aviva, and together we raised two magnificent children, Ofer and Nurit. From Ofer and Michal, four grandchildren were born to us in Kfar Aza. From Nurit and Miki, six grandchildren were born to us in Kfar Aza. I had reached the stage of a family tree firmly planted in the soil of the homeland, bearing fruit. But suddenly, from within the fences of evil, October 7th, 2023, arrived. The terrifying sights of fire and dust, the slaughter and horrific murder of innocents reached me once again. My grandson, dearer to me than all, Yahav (of blessed memory), was murdered while protecting his wife, Shaye-Lee, and his one-month-old daughter, Shaya. My granddaughter, dearer to me than all, Hadar (of blessed memory), and her husband Itay (of blessed memory), were murdered while protecting their ten-month-old twins, Roee and Guy. Once again, I am at the end of my strength, in despair, drowning. And I have no more earth to cling to." 💔

We need more pushback from scientists on the actual harms of assisted typing on autistic people

Our paper is out: By analysing health records from millions of real-world patients from the literature, we can now finally answer the questions about the long-term outcomes of ECT. What we found, consistently, across well-designed studies from the UK, Canada, US, Sweden, Denmark, and Taiwan, is that ECT does not increase the risk for dementia, heart attacks or stroke, and is associated with a significant reduction in overall mortality. cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Also, people should stop pretending that just because a concept is complex/multidimensional or in their mind includes ancillary constructs doesn't mean that thing *can't* be assessed and rank-ordered with some people having more of it than others (literally this is the only way it would be possible to have case positives and negatives). Take "being sick" for example - many ways to define, operationalizations in practice, etc., but it's not controversial that someone with septic shock and multi-organ failure is sicker than someone with a self-limited upper respiratory infection. Clearly this reductionism can harm, but pretending that it's not at times useful (or even possible) is plain silly.

What stands out to me here is how distinct ASD-linked mutations start off doing different things, but then converge on shared gene expression changes as development progresses. This points to a unifying molecular framework beneath ASD's genetic diversity. #neuroscience

RT @sapinker: There is no autism spectrum, says expert (esteemed cognitive scientist Uta Frith) who pioneered our understanding of the cogn…

In this Debate paper, @HelenTager explores how to combat misinformation in child mental health with a focus on protecting the integrity of #autism research and practice in the United States. bit.ly/4bpa2G6

Excited to share our latest work describing our perspective on stratifying autism by a type I vs type II distinction in early development. rdcu.be/e7KyD