TV Watching Causes Autism?

A new Cornell study on autism has received a lot of attention lately. The study, which links autism to television watching, first picked up steam when it appeared on Slate last month. After Time gave it a mention, the blogosphere was fooled into thinking they stumbled upon a real story.

Whether it's real or not, the idea is a scary one. Researchers claim to have found a significant link between amounts of rainfall (which keeps children indoors), cable television prevalence (which keeps them glued to kids programming), and the rates of autism in children under 3.

The scariest part of the report is that it comes from an economist, not a psychologist, scientist, or anyone associated with the medical community. What's next? Talk radio pundits explaining what behavior is typical and atypical of patients with Parkinson's disease?

Contrary to the popular phrase, correlation may actually imply causation. But it certainly does not prove it. I imagine that if studies were conducted on the eating habits of cigarette smokers we would find a high correlation between smoking and fast food consumption. According to my theory, the more you smoke, the more likely you are to eat fast food. Is it safe to say then that a diet rich in Big Macs may lead to lung cancer?

Instead of brainstorming absurd ways to explain the missing link of autism, why don't we pay more attention to what we already know?

The efforts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield have revealed that mercury in the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine can trigger autism in some children with bowel irregularities. And thanks to Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s June 2005 Rolling Stone expose, it's no secret that Wakefield's findings frighten the U.S. government. With the fear of creating a public scare against important vaccinations and losing billions of dollars in lawsuits from parents of autistic children, vaccine manufacturers and corrupt politicians have worked tirelessly to suppress public knowledge of the report.

Thanks to their hard work, our understanding of this debilitating disorder has been tainted forever. When the professor of my developmental child psychology course covered autism and students asked if the vaccine rumors were true, my professor told the class that the medical community has overwhelmingly rejected those claims. And with that assertion, which sounded confident enough to quell any curiosities the students had, a room full of future psychologists was contaminated with false information.

Now that Time is covering this careless Cornell study, more students and the general public alike will encounter more confusion regarding the mysteries of autism. More knowledge will be polluted. More false truths will be spoken in lecture halls across the world.

Not all economists, however, are presenting irresponsible conjecture. "Freakonomics" co-author Steven Levitt provides a more plausible hypothesis:

"My theory: when it rains a lot, parents watch more TV, see more shows about autism, and this leads them to seek out a diagnosis of autism for their kids. They have the same kids, it is just that TV makes them believe that their kids are autistic."

Now that's a theory I can get behind.