Simon Baron-Cohen is knighted

Post Reply New Topic

Queen’s New Year Honours 2021: All those honoured in Cambridgeshire as Prof Simon Baron-Cohen receives a knighthood

It's not that I hate SBC, but I'm not certain he deserves to be "knighted" for his "service" to us. He's left a bit of a mixed legacy as he veers towards retirement.

I feel like his heart is in the right place, and I give him credit where credit is due, but I still don't like the image of him being knighted for his service like he's some kind of patron saint.

As a Brit it’s well known the whole end of year knighthood system is corrupt anyway.

I don’t hate him, I’ve said before he’s not a scientist as his background is psychology so most of the stuff he comes out with is theoretical. Like male brain theory.

May be interesting to read but does nothing to the ordinary autistic person to help them be more functional.

That was his actual job description:

- develop real therapies to help autistic people

What people like him are paid to do by both tax payers and the ordinary charity fund raiser like the person running a marathon for charity, in good faith that they are giving money to people that will make a positive physical difference.

As far as his job task is concerned he’s achieved nothing practical but irritate people with his silly 3am tweets, letting the majority of autistic people down.

What are these silly 3 am tweets? Twitter seems to exist so people can tweet dumb things.

Well then I guess now his proper title is Sir Simon Baron-Cohen.

According to SBC's tweets, he seems to have doubled down on the "Extreme Male Brain" theory... ugh...

Sir Simon Baron-Cohen FBA FBPsS FMedSci

There was a hashtag going round #endautismnow and he compared those behind it to nazi`s.

This comment from someone who`s actually paid to control research to find biological treatments for autism.

The same man who was researching the causes of autism and is happy to promote "early intervention" taking advantage of brain plasticity to err prevent autsim or at least reduce it

Anyway this article from a jewish autistic writer goes into it better than i could:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/godwin- ... ty-uproar/

Another article:

https://www.ageofautism.com/2018/08/sas ... rcher.html

Let me know when his cousin Sacha is knighted.

#endautism now is a hashtag created by J.D. Handley to promote his book ‘Stop Autism Now’. Mr. Handley is the confounder of the anti vaxx organization ‘Generation Rescue’ and the anti-vaxx website ‘Age of Autism’ from which the second linked article came from.

Sir Baron-Cohen is another of the long line of people who lazily compare people they disagree with, with Nazi’s. Nazi eugenics was part of a government supported campaign to intentionally exterminate groups. Anti-vaxxers think they are trying to prevent people from government and big Pharma poisoning. They are not intentionally trying to wipe out a group as they reject the idea that “people with autism” are an identifiable group of people.

#EndAutismNow is at the very least a poorly phrased hashtag that excludes many people who seem fine with "having Autism." It's not a hashtag I'll defend, but it's not a Nazi equivalent. (The Nazis had their own "End Autism Now" campaign, which involved euthanasia and child murder. No one using the #EndAutismNow hashtag should be compared to that.)

Sir Baron-Cohen used age-old the "reductio ad Hitlerum" fallacy, and also threw in a few references to terror organizations across the pond.

However, the pro-cure Israeli journalist, while starting off quite eloquently, seems to jump the gun when he misstates Baron-Cohen's actual words... nowhere did Sir Baron-Cohen compare "Autistic people to Nazis"... quite the opposite. The guy seems to put his own thesis through some sort of abstraction, wherein "Simon Baron-Cohen compared some pro-cure Autistic twitter users to Nazis" becomes "Simon Baron-Cohen compared some Autistic people to Nazis" and then becomes "Simon Baron-Cohen implied that Autistic people are like Nazis."

From the article, the author reiterates:

No one, least of all SBC himself, ever implied that "Autistic people" are anything like these groups. He made a stupid, lazy comparison between the users of a certain hashtag and white supremacist terror groups.

I'll reread the article because it jumped off a slippery slope near the end there, while it remained fairly eloquently written.

I understand that twitter gives a limited text response but he never mentioned anti vax. The comment at face value reads as anyone wanting a cure for autistic symptoms regardless of severity, pain & suffering on the individual is like a nazi.

Especially dumb for a NT who`s actually being paid to find solutions to reduce / eliminate autistic symptoms in principal regardless of how realistic that is.

And what is your criticism of the EMB theory and the supporting evidence?

First and foremost, that it relies on male/female brain dichotomy wherein men are the analytical "systemizers" and women the intuitive "empathizers." I've spent a lot of time researching gender differences in thought process, and these differences are so frequently overblown that they turn into sexist caricatures. They are highly misogynistic. Women do not love constantly being told that we are better suited for childrearing and gossiping with the ladies, as opposed to building, planning, and analyzing. And we are told this a lot.

Evidence linking Autistic traits to higher testosterone levels is inconsistent. SBC's questionnaire methods were pigeonholed and flawed.

MBT of Autism is very shaky, and has some serious negative implications given the rather sexist assumptions that its name was founded on.

Citations:

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/extre ... explained/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... D:4D-ratio

So you have not actually read SBC work. Here is a link to the large study cited in your first link you gave: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... 811032.pdf

His work is not about sex per se, but differences in cognition based on development. His research has shown that women can be extreme systemizers and men can be extreme empathizers. The first citation you linked to does describe this misunderstand surrounding his research. The second link is to a study that was badly designed and had nothing to do with the EMB theory--EMB is not to do with testosterone levels in a person, but testosterone levels during development in the womb that effects a child. SBC also recognizes other factors in development as well.

If gender differences are not important, why are women underdiagnosed with autism? Surely, if men and women are cognitively identical, then you are suggesting that autism is more prevalent in men? I am not sure the research would support that. And if women are underdiagnosed, why? Could EMB be answering part of that question?

Personally, I think the name he gave to his research was not very wise. It has caused people to dismiss it out of hand without finding out more about it.

I never said that men and women are totally identical. I said that cognitive differences are overblown and sensationalized for sexist purposes.

When you said "if gender differences are not important, why are women underdiagnosed with autism"... what are you saying? Gender differences in what context? What are you referring to here-- overall gender differences in behavior and cognition, or gender differences between "Autistic" men and women?