I have to be honest here, I agree with him completely insofar as every salient bit of his point but I do think that this bit *was* and unnecessary dog-whistle. What I mean is that calling for a quack to support their wild claims, or for a scientific community at a highly respected institution to pressure their employees to show some modicum of professionalism is perfectly acceptable and right. But like the “race card” argument, preemptive claims of “hope they don’t think it’s sexist to expect a woman to act like a professional scientist” is really just playing into the hands, unwittingly or not, of people who like to use these kinds of arguments to discredit the work of legitimate female scientists while blaming the women who work for the advancement of other women.

It’s not cool.

Publish or perish!

That might need to be amended to specify “Not on HuffPo”.

Fixed.

My kids might watch a Scooby-Doo cartoon on the computer or I’ll show them a funny cat video, but their not checking email, reading news, looking for jobs, reading blogs, updating social media sites, parsing spreadsheets, etc. They use the computer less than kids in the 50′s and 60′s watched TV. Computers are tools. It’s like saying a screwdriver causes dementia.

If autism is usually diagnosed at around age 3, how does the internet (something you get exposure to later in life) cause it?

It’s diagnosed around age 3, but there are warning signs visible in most babies that end up diagnosed as autistic as early as the first year of life. It’s just not conclusive because it can turn out to be a much milder developmental delay, or another developmental problem altogether. IE not good for testing because it’s not specific enough.

It’s pretty clear that people with autism are autistic from a pre-linguistic stage. Which makes claims of post-natal environmental causes particularly frustrating – it panders to the very-natural parental need for an “excuse” – they didn’t “make” a weird baby and they certainly didn’t miss the signs of weirdness for years, someone stole their perfectly normal baby from them! :P

Disclaimer: I’m autistic, and I use the internet. Oh NOES!

And it is permanent!

Scientists nowadays don’t have it so good as before – short of curing AIDS, you don’t really make the front cover.

Baroness Susan Greenfield … a ripe target, if ever there was one.  Check out her wikipedia entry – she’s been so busy setting up this and directing that.  She can’t possibly have time to run those things and also actually be a scientist and also keep the public lens pointed at her … particularly as a Baron(ess) is “the lowest rank in the peerage” – how angry would you be?

Wiki:  “she is best known as a populariser of science” – what’s that then?  Apple have done a fine job of that.

She’s an electrician’s daughter – maybe he was mean to her, and she’s had a deep-seated abiding hate for all things non-Luddite.

Her little awards section demonstrates she’s well ‘in with the gang’ – so will find a route to publicity no matter what.

So we should pay her no heed, and move along.

If you want to keep up to date with her, just read the (UK) Daily Mail.  She’ll be back.

I could maybe see some plausibility in her “childhood dementia” argument. However, the Autism argument is really baseless and ignorant.  If autism is usually diagnosed at around age 3, how does the internet (something you get exposure to later in life) cause it? This seems akin to Michele Bachman spouting off some nonsense about a 12 year old girl “getting” mental retardation from HPV vaccines. Severe ignorance about the disorder coupled with sensationalism surrounding misread research does not lead anyone to progress. Neither does spouting off baseless conjecture.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111016/21385416376/british-historian-porn-internet-censorship-north-korea-is-right-internet-is-our-enemy.shtml#c32