I'm not going to link to it, but Sabine Hossenfelder just posted a youtube video titled "Why is everyone suddenly autistic?" If you don't know who that is, she's a famous theoretical physicist who does a lot of science explaining and usually says everyone is wrong. A few weeks ago she did a video about whether being trans was a teenage fad, and it was pretty bad. But this video about autism is truly terrible.
She starts by invoking Simon Baron-Cohen. His name is literally the first thing she says. (SBC is a well-known villain in the autistic community.) Then she talks about the DSM symptoms, and does her usual science skeptic thing for a while. Eventually she gets around to branding the neurodiversity movement as being extremist, defends AutismSpeaks as a charitable organization, Google/Alphabet's MSSNG genetic analysis project as obviously not eugenics (she's wrong), and sides with ABA providers that autistic children need to be abused to behave. And through it all, she didn't forget her signature-brand stupid jokes that are barely amusing when she's punching up but come off as kind of evil when she's making fun of autistic children.
This is Hossenfelder at her worst. She "just wanted to learn about the symptoms of autism" and ended up in a field where she has no expertise, but decided her generic science chops would make up for that. It's weird that a science communicator who is known for tearing down bad science got fooled by bad science, but not really surprising. Mumble mumble Dunning-Kruger mumble.
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