Douglas Edwards 

I hate linking to YouTube, but IMO this is too good to miss. I just discovered that YouTube has at least three recordings of public presentations by eminent psychology researcher Morton Ann #Gernsbacher, who is also the mother of an autistic son — but about as far from the "autism mom" stereotype as it is possible to get, and a determined and redoubtable advocate for #neurodiversity rights and recognition.

My wife and I watched the following presentation by Gernsbacher, which was given in 2007, but only posted to YouTube three weeks ago — I had the honor of contributing the very first views of this video on YouTube. Apparently the "autism epidemic" myth was already going strong back then. Gernsbacher contributes a masterly takedown of the myth, as well as a devastating indictment of the disgraceful scholarly silence that permitted it to gain traction.

(The sound quality at the beginning of the video, where other speakers introduce Gernsbacher, is terrible; her own actual presentation has much better sound quality. If you'd like to skip to the good part, she appears onscreen around 00:08:25 and begins her presentation around 00:08:40.)

@autistics

Gernsbacher, Morton Ann. A conspicuous absence of scientific leadership: the illusory autism epidemic. YouTube. 2007 [presentation date; published online 2026 Feb 20]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-tRsrduTIE

Morton Gernsbacher at the University of Richmond, 2007.

YouTube
Mar 17 at 8:13amWeb
Show threadshadows6d ago
@dedicto @autistics this was a very interesting watch. However, in the intervening years some of the arguments have shifted from “autism is an epidemic” to “autism is overdiagnosed and we can’t afford to provide support to this many people” and I worry that the latter group will latch onto the repeated mentions of broadening diagnosis requirements causing the increase in diagnoses.
Show threadDouglas Edwards 6d ago

@shadows @autistics Presently both myths (epidemic and overdiagnosis) manage to coexist, and must be combatted simultaneously. And both myths rest on the same tendency at bottom: an aversion to learning, scientifically, what autism really is, in favor of unexamined numerical counts (leading to a spurious "epidemic") or prescientific impressions of what autism "must" be (leading to a belief that only [subjectively] "severe" autism can be the real thing, and all the other cases must be misdiagnoses).

Few people have done as much to promote a genuinely scientific understanding of autism as Morton Ann #Gernsbacher. I'm also looking forward to watching her other two presentations that have been posted on YouTube — one from 2013, the other from 2021. Maybe these more recent videos will address the "overdiagnosis" myth.