What's your opinion on Simon Baron-Cohen and his ideas?

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Neutral- what I've read is interesting, but the story also seems a little too pat.

I wouldn't label the controversial funnyman a mere 'troll', you' being too hard on the guy. Hes more a undercover method actor pushing himself into absurd situations exposing interpersonal psychodynamics of modern society and its sectional group biases in order to increase his own comedic success. Now that's a mouthful. Whew.

That's totally understandable. I like a bit of humour too.

Simon Baron Cohen is not a scientist but a psychologist (Psychology is not classed as a hard science by the way). So, his ideas of extreme male brain theory are psychological in nature, rather than neuroscience.

I guess Einstein is not a scientist either. He is theoretical physicist. Behavioral psychology is not a hard science. There is more to science than the hard sciences. Baron-Cohen can be both a psychologist and a scientist.

The issue I have with Baron-Cohen is that he promotes the tests he developed (the AQ and the empathy one, forget what it's called). In his view, these are the definitive autism diagnostic tests, and he uses them to double down on the ratio of males to females.
He makes no recognition of the difference between the male and female autism phenotypes, or that the AQ questions are based on male presentations and are therefore biased towards diagnosing males.

I would feel happier with him if he were willing to accept the concept of different autism presentation between the genders and change the AQ questions to ones less gender-specific.

And I have the feeling that he's barking up the wrong tree in his efforts to link high testosterone levels in the womb to autism on the basis of his male brain theory. It seems too much like trying to find evidence for the answer he wants to hear. (What do you call that? Selection bias?)

You don't have to like SBC works, but misrepresenting it serves no purpose. First, he is very clear that his test are not diagnostic and never have been.

Second, he does recognize the problem of under-diagnosis of women:





It is called confirmation bias. But this type of research is not confirmation bias because he is not selecting information to support his idea, but doing scientific studies to see if prenatal testosterone correlates to the risk of autism. If there was a correlation, that is not confirmation bias as the evidence, not his world view, supports the idea. Specifically, what about actual studies he has done in this area do you object to? Please reference a particular study.

(Selection bias is a process that does not creates a purely random sample. For example, if I use this forum to determine the general perception of autism, it would be selection bias because the people here are a specific group interested in autism and would not represent non-autistic views of the general population.)

Much of this also has to do with definition fuzziness. If you decide that Autistics necessarily must be interested in technology to have special interests (hyperfixations on, idk, cartoons or horses or something do not count) and Autistic boys are more likely to fit that profile, then gender ratio will skew that way. But how one defines Autism to begin with is subjective.

So some of it feels like circular reasoning.

I agree, it is very complex. Autism is defined through behavior, but it is a cognitive difference. There is a complex link between cognitive processes and the resulting behavior. The restricted behavior criteria is complex because that can manifest itself in many ways and most of the research has been doing based on male presentation. Stereotyping as not been serving our community.

Francesca Happe's work in this area is interesting: Compensatory strategies below the behavioural surface in autism: a qualitative study

She has also been focusing her work on the cognitive aspect of autism, rather than the behavioral.

Thank you, Jiheisho, I stand corrected.
You are one of the most knowledgable people on this site

As a scientist and a psychologist I wouldn't know I'm autistic if it wasn't for Baron-Cohen's work on theory of mind. I am also a woman though, who probably should have been diagnosed long ago and some people think he is responsible for the lack of female representation in autism research. Can one person be responsible and should that diminish the good work he has done?

Whole parts of autism research are vastly off the mark because most of it is done by neurotypicals (no offense intended) but my main issue with the diagnostic process is that as long as autism is defined by deficits (theory of mind, empathy etc...) people are going to be missed. I didn't know that theory of mind even existed until I did a psychology degree (my third undergraduate degree).

I went a bit off my point there but I wanted to post to say that one or two bad theories shouldn't label a scientist good or bad (and lots of psychology uses hard science, even if it didn't, it's still a science).

Any positive autism traits also exist in the NT population.

Its the deficits that cause it to be a disorder. Otherwise the world wouldn`t have bothered looking into it & trying to prevent, reduce its impact on the person via therapy / drugs or research a cure.

All traits of autism can be emulated. Good and bad. I can think of every autistic issues from several forms of neglect and trauma -- no need for neurology or inherited genetics.

This is also how misdiagnosis happens in both ways (autistics are not diagnosed as autistics, allistics are diagnosed as autistics).



If your mission is to prevent or cure, you gotta know your real target first. Not many do.

I don't consider it a disorder! My research refers to ASC and if I have to use ASD, I consider the D to stand for difference.