Bigotry against autistic people and women is so embedded in a lot of research that I think the results end up telling you more about the biases of the researchers than about the topics that they claim to be studying.  A recent study claims that women who have a common genetic difference are bad mothers:

Based on previous studies and our current study, it is safe to say that some parental behaviors, such as sensitivity, supportiveness and responsiveness are, in part, genetically influenced,” co-author Ariel Knafo told Discovery News.

“The R3 allele that we linked in the current study to lower levels of maternal gentle guidance (i.e. use of reasoning, polite requests, positive comments, or suggestions) and structuring (i.e. preventing distractions, setting goals, and demonstrating and explaining certain actions or materials to the child) during a play interaction, was previously linked by us to preschoolers’ lower altruistic behavior and generosity,” added Knafo, a professor in the Department of Psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

How did they judge the quality of the mothering?  A subjective rating scale, of course, used in an artificial lab setting.

Why did they choose to study mothers rather than fathers (or both parents)?  No explanation-- I guess because blaming women is almost always good for business and credibility.  And, hey, it's probably true for guys, too.

Why did they choose to study this particular allele?  Because it's associated with autism, of course:

“It is possible that such common alleles/variants, like the RS3 allele in question, which are somehow involved in autism, will be associated with autistic-like traits such as being less communicative, more susceptible to anxiety and stress, and more self-oriented/introverted,” Knafo said. “All of these behaviors are common, and in some theories, autism is considered to be the extreme of various spectrums, such as social and communication skills.”

People with an inherited tendency toward bad parenting are also more likely to suffer from the autistic-like traits.

And what to do about these genetically inferior mommies who ruin their kids by acting too autistic?  Medicate and train away their differences, of course:

“The influence of most genes is not set in stone, and similarly to the effect of therapy or anti-anxiety pills on anxiety, mothers who will be interested in changing their parenting style should be able to do so, especially as the research in the field, which is currently in its infancy, progresses,” Knafo explained. “There are many parent training programs, some of which with substantial success.”

A couple of weeks ago, prozac in water was giving fish autism.  This week, researchers are "silencing" genes in zebrafish that they think might cause autism and seeing which ones do weird things to their fishy brains:

The researchers studied one gene at a time, silencing each with short strands of nucleic acids that target a particular gene and prevent its protein from being produced.

For 21 of the genes, silencing led to abnormal development. Most produced brain deficits, including improper development of the brain or eyes, thinning of the brain, or inflation of the brain ventricles, cavities that contain cerebrospinal fluid.

The researchers also found abnormalities in the wiring of axons, the long neural projections that carry messages to other neurons, and in simple behaviors of the fish. The results show that the 16p11.2 genes are very important during brain development, helping to explain the connection between this region and brain disorders.

Furthermore, the researchers were able to restore normal development by treating the fish with the human equivalents of the genes that had been repressed.

“That allows you to deduce that what you’re learning in fish corresponds to what that gene is doing in humans. The human gene and the fish gene are very similar,” Sive said.

Yes, of course.

It makes much more sense to research autism by turning on and off fish gene expression than it would to actually talk to autistic people.

Oh-- go fish.

Autism Speaks reveals its Top Ten Autism Research Achievements of 2011.  Looking at them will tell you a lot about the priorities of the organization and in autism research in general.

Much of what is there is undeniably significant-- most notably the study in Goyang City, South Korea, which was the first one to test all children in a population of significant size for autism.  They found a rate of 2.6%, which is more than double the percentage of people diagnosed.

Also significant is the finding that fraternal twins are much more similar to identical twins than one would expect in their tendency to develop autism.  The jump of the researchers to the conclusion that autism is much less genetic and much more environmental than previously thought, however, is not supported yet, in my opinion, by data they have made available. It bothers me that Autism Speaks takes the researchers claim at face value,especially since another of their top research findings, that siblings of autistic children are much more likely to be autistic than was previously thought, contradicts the implications they find here.

One study, on early screening for autism, is especially weak, and seems to be there only because of  (reasonable) bias in favor of early identification.

That study is the only one mentioned on the list that was neither supported by Autism Speaks  or focused on genetics and causation.  In fact, genetics is the focus of seven out of the ten "achievements," and two of them are mouse studies.

What is missing?

There is no research focused on supporting people with autism.  There is so little interest in things like Rosalind Picard's development of spectacles that help autistic people read facial expressions that Picard's name has apparently never been mentioned on the Autism Speaks website (try searching for her there).

There is no research focused on education, despite the undeniable fact that educational interventions such as Applied Behavior Analysis are the ones that have been most effective so far in helping autistic people.

There is no research focused on autistic adults, despite the insistence from Autism Speaks and its supporters that they are now interested in us.

Again, if your primary interest is eugenics, developing prenatal tests that will allow parents to abort fetuses that seem likely to develop autism, it makes sense to donate money to Autism Speaks.

If you want to support autistic people and our families, your money would be better spent elsewhere.

An international study led by researchers from Emory University suggests that missing genes on chromosome 17 are highly correlated with autism and schizophrenia:

Researchers detected a recurrent deletion in 24 patients out of more than 23,000 patients with ASD, developmental delay, intellectual disability, or schizophrenia.

This deletion was not present in any of 52,448 control individuals.

“We calculate a minimum odds ratio of 13.58 for this sample,” says David H. Ledbetter, Ph.D., a lead author of the study, “meaning that someone with this deletion is at least 13.58 times more likely to develop ASD or schizophrenia than is someone lacking this genetic variation.”