Plenty of people are bad at science. I mean, I’m not particularly great at it, but I’m not terrible, either. This one scientist at MIT is pretty good at some sciences and pretty bad at some other ones. Actually, more like really bad. She recently gave a speech claiming that half of all children will be autistic by 2025, on account of chemicals in genetically modified foods.
David Gorski debunked this laughable (and irresponsible) claim wonderfully. All he really does is point out that correlation does not equal causation and cite a whole bunch of studies debunking every element of the bogus autism claim. It’s great:
What the increase in autism prevalence corresponds to is really the expansion of diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders that occurred in the early 1990s as well as increased screening for the condition, which, as I’ve pointed out, will always increase the prevalence of any condition.
One thing I like to do to demonstrate how correlation usually does not equal causation, particularly for looking at things like vaccines and autism, is to point out other things that have increased dramatically since the early 1990s or before.
Cell phones, the internet, and organic food all correlate to the rise in autism at least as well as genetically modified foods do. It’s pretty glorious.
So I’ve extrapolated the MIT scientist’s figures, and by my calculations, at this rate, in 2071, 200% of all children will be autistic.