Episode 71: The autism epidemic

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can’t be wrong about literally everything, can he? His latest controversial statement is that he wants to find the “environmental exposure” that has been causing the huge spike in autism rates over the past few decades.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into whether there really is an autism epidemic in the first place—and if there isn’t, why the diagnoses might be going up so quickly anyway.

The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. This week we discussed the article from the most recent issue about the UK’s land value tax—a cautionary tale of a policy that might sound good on paper, but was utterly cursed in practice. Find this and so many more fascinating articles about human progress at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* RFK Jr’s latest claims about autism (and his plans to gather data)

* His statement “I believe autism comes from vaccines”, from 2023

* His “Children’s Health Defence” org from 2015

* CDC data on autism rates in the US

* And similar data from the UK

* A paper on the much lower rates in 1966

* “Early infantile autism” - the original 1944 paper by Leo Kanner

* Hans Asperger’s similarly-timed research

* And on his collaboration with the Nazis

* On “refrigerator mothers”

* Data from after the MMR vaccine was split in Yokohama, Japan

* The DSM-V checklist for autism spectrum disorder

* Scott Alexander’s controversial piece “Against against autism cures”

* 2023 paper on the prevalence of profound autism

* Article on the growing waiting lists for autism diagnoses

* More details on the same

* 2022 paper on the genetics of autism

* Article on rates of extra time in exams in the UK

* Adam Hunt’s post about Renée Thornton, hot-air balloonist

* The Economist’s Bagehot column on the “tyranny of turning up”

* Underdiagnosed autism in girls

Credits

We’re grateful to Adam Hunt for talking to us about psychiatric diagnoses for this episode. The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

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Episode 71: The autism epidemic

The Studies Show

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