Yes, I too found it quite odd that a business school professor was putting out this research.

However, it is a legit route for someone involved in policy. Granted this is not your standard scientist. This professor ASKED other professors who was doing this kind of research. No one was, so it was a legitimate route of inquiry for this person to make, even if they were some bozo from the business school. The research would not consume millions of dollars, but could likely be done by grad students that needed to be kept busy.

I did find it odd that this particular route was followed to try and peer behind the curtain that is ASD but this was just some guy in the business school. We are desperately trying to unearth WHY we find so much autism today. It is often not enough to say "well, we are just now diagnosing things that we didn't diagnose before." While this may be true and kids that exhibited Asperger's decades ago were just "weird" or considered "some king of messed up in the head...." We still need to try and wrangle some answers about what is causing this large percent of kids to not have the standard wiring of the brain.

There is so much anecdotal evidence floating around that it is hard to see clearly with scientific detachment. How many parents have blogged about how everything was great one day and then at 4:35 on Thursday, everything just went bad and I just want my sweet boy back and for him to be OK...

The BIG deal here is that someone has given us a new route for the hard core cognitive neuroscientists to examine. Sure the sources of data are rather iffy and we could be looking at the same issue with "folks that live near power lines die of _____ disease more often than the general population."

However, it is great to have found a new environmental factor to examine. Hell, reading this article made me feel like crap that when my kid got up today, I half slept on the couch while he watched sponge bob. Maybe for 2 hours... He certainly shows some of my own ADD tendencies even at age 3. I have really got to get my hands on that research about how those early childhood teachers have "taught" kids how to increase their attention span and learn delayed gratification.

I'll certainly curtail any TV if I have a newborn around the house. That does make sense in the way that vision goes from mommy smelling colored blobs to full sight in a few years.

I just don't buy the criticism that the earliest possible paper that says "hey guys, why not look at THIS for causes of ASD" is some how not a legitimate warning. The guy does not seem to make extraordinary claims and clearly from the article, everyone knows we could be looking at the same thing as "poorer people live next to power lines and thus have higher rates of disease". They don't get the disease from power lines (I think 40 billion was spent on proving that fact). They get diseases related to their socio-economic factors.

Where there is smoke, there is often fire. Let's hope that this helps point us in a useful direction for dealing with ASD. We have hit such a wall in trying to address this scourge, that ANY research direction might be useful.

Well said.

True, however, with a topic as timely as autism, the authors and others should proceed more cautiously. For instance, how many mothers who read slate will take the time to read the original article. Thus, we are left playing "telephone" and rather than hearing the authors voices, we are left with the media relaying their perception of the message. And the alternative message that other factors are at least as plausible as the authors' does not get much play. Let me also posit that it is at least, if not more likely, that autistic children simply seek out more television viewing than others based on their need for systematization. Check out Simon Baron-Cohen's fine work at Cambridge - it makes absolute sense; particularly with all of the evidence that autism is genetic, not something that is "developed,' although I do believe the phenotypical presentation may vary some depending on environmental circumstances.