They Have To Be A Little More Careful With These Titles (2)
September 11, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Headline a story “Hi-tech facial scans used to detect autism in children” and what do you think will happen?
A professor angry that “his work had been misreported, he had been misquoted, and he wanted nothing more to do with the media”?
The full story is at the BBC news and underscores the gap between scientific research and journalists (and throw in some bloggers, and things can get rather messy). Not all the news is fit to print, nor is it news: Note this headline from today’s Guardian:
The articles notes a correlation between high testosterone levels in the womb and children getting high scores on the autistic spectrum quotient or AQ which measures “personality traits that are typically much more extreme in autistic children.” The children do not themselves have autism, but “autistic traits” (and I don’t think I am alone in thinking that many of us who are not autistic have a few such traits). Somehow, when the subject is autism, some exaggeration (like about an “epidemic of autism“) has a way of recurring.
It’s unfortunate it went that way, but the prof’s going to have to learn to be more media-savvy. The problem’s not new, and it’s a function of how science news works. It happens even in very good outlets, and even when the reporters know something about the science. There’s a good book on the subject — argh, the title’s slipping my mind, but it’s basically a handbook for scientists.
The AQ test is one of worst recent developments in autism. It is a test of normal variants of human personality types on a Bell Curve from reserved to outgoing.
It is not autism. Yet you have people now self-diagnosing themselves as being ‘on the spectrum’ setting up web sites and selling their autobiographies.
It is part of a redefining of the nature of autism from what it is, a pervasive developmental disorder caused by a disruption in early brain development to what it is not, a personality disorder.