The New York Times Sunday Review had an article this week linking autism with the hygiene hypothesis. Written by Moises Velasquez-Manoff, the piece is part of the Times' opinion coverage, not reported news. It was also one of those sort of stories that comes across as highly persuasive ... until you start looking at the details. About halfway through reading it yesterday, it occurred to me that Velasquez-Manoff was making a lot of big statements—"perhaps 1/3 of autism, and very likely more, looks like a type of inflammatory disease", for example—without citing the sources to back those statements up.

That's easy to do when you're writing a relatively short article summarizing the contents of a much bigger book, as Velasquez-Manoff seems to be doing here. But the problems go deeper than that, according to biologist and science writer Emily Willingham. In a must-read blog post, she goes through the NYT piece and points out many flaws in argument and detail. The main problem, though, is a pretty simple one: Moises Velasquez-Manoff presents what seems to be a largely speculative hypothesis as sure-fire truth. To make that case as persuasive as it is, he leaves out lots of evidence that doesn't match up with his thesis.

First, he appears to describe autism as a “parallel epidemic” with autoimmune diseases, even though a careful review of the literature shows that there likely isn’t an “epidemic” of autism. I'm also having trouble finding any data to confirm an epidemic of autoimmune diseases (he provides no sourcing), although I find that incidence rates in general seem to go up with improvements in diagnostic tools, a scenario that is common with application of new technologies in many diseases and disorders. Without that parallel or even confirmation of either "epidemic," his carefully constructed, fragile “if that, then this” scenario suffers from that point on.

...Velasquez-Manoff then asks, “What has happened to the modern immune system?” and goes on to assert that the concepts underlying the “hygiene hypothesis” also underlie autism and correlations between autism and maternal autoimmune disorders or asthma. An “evolutionary answer,” he says, is that we are no longer sufficiently riddled with parasites and microbes (we actually still have our microbes), so our immune system, twiddling its presumably heroic thumbs, casts its roving eye elsewhere--i.e., on ourselves. See, people who still live with parasites, he says, “don’t suffer from inflammatory diseases as much as we do” (italics mine). “We,” I assume, being the clean people of the western world. No sources given, and that assertion does not dovetail with, for example, what we know about asthma rates in Latin America (really high) versus Western Europe (not so high), although in places where things like leprosy, parasitic worm infections that include river blindness, and nasty bacterial eye infections are high, type 1 diabetes is low. Raise your hand if you're willing to make that tradeoff. And then he says, “Autism also follows this pattern” and “seems to be less prevalent in the developing world.”

... when you’re dealing with intestinal parasites and their friends, you and your government may not really have the time to go around carefully diagnosing developmental disorders. I suffered through his unsourced dismissal of epidemiologists who say as much, and I just about had a coronary when he cited “at least one (unnamed) Western doctor” (the best kind, you know) who had found autism was “nearly nonexistent” in a Cambodian population “rife with parasites and acute infections.” Um… if, as Velasquez-Manoff seems to argue, maternal infection sets the stage for maternal immune dysfunction and presumably autism, how is it that a population rife with acute infections evades autism? He doesn’t ever name the “Western doctor,” but autism does exist in Cambodia, and while we’re at it, here are a few other things Cambodian children must endure because they’ve got this great “evolutionary”-based existence that 'protects' them against autism.

Willingham's basic point: There is an atmosphere of desperation and panic surrounding autism, which has lead some parents to try a range of risky interventions in the hopes of "curing" it. Given that, maybe it's irresponsible to claim that a hypothetical factor in autism is the absolute cause. Especially when the proposed treatment—intentional infection with parasitic whipworms—comes with its own downsides, including growth retardation in children, anemia, and even rectal prolapse.

Read the New York Times op-ed

Read the rest of Emily Willingham's response

What a steaming turd of an opening line in David Streitfeld's otherwise serviceable New York Times piece about the Ellen Pao/Kleiner Perkins sexual harassment lawsuit, and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley.

Here's the opening graf (bold-ing, mine):

MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.

You guys, ladies suck at technology and the New York Times is ON IT.

Radia "Mother of the Internet" Perlman and the ghosts of RADM Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace and every woman who worked in technology for the past 150 years frown upon you, sir. Women may have been invisible, but the work we did laid the groundwork for more visible advancements now credited to more famous men.

"Men are credited with inventing the internet." There. Fixed it for you.

I ragequit this article like, 10 times, and couldn't get past that awful opening line. But eventually, I managed to put down my frying pan and unbunch my apron, and I sat down on my princess tuffet and asked a man to help me read the whole thing.

I appreciate that in this article, Mr. Streitfeld is advancing a public conversation about gender inequality in the tech industry. Reporting about a phenomenon many would prefer to deny, and including women's voices in that conversation (though many of them sound too afraid of retaliation by potential male funders to be candid)—that's a good thing. Pointing out how rare it is that this sort of sex discrimination lawsuit makes it to trial is also a good thing.

I know that headlines aren't always written by the reporter, so I can't fault Streitfeld for the abominable one used for this article in the Times print edition: "A Lawsuit Shakes Foundation of a Man’s World of Tech." Go ahead, throw up in your mouth a little. I did.

I know that photo captions aren't always written by the reporter either, so I can't fault him for the lack of logic behind this one:

Ellen Pao, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has filed a lawsuit contending sexual harassment. The suit has surprised some people in Silicon Valley because Kleiner Perkins is among relatively few such firms there to routinely hire and promote women.

Well, duh. If a VC firm does not hire any women VCs, then there are no women VCs at the firm to sexually harass.

There's a lot of other interesting but to my mind, tangential stuff in the body of the piece about the sexuality of Ms. Pao's husband, and accusations of litigiousness and sexual harassment on his part. And, a sweet but even more tangential quote from his ex-boyfriend, who sounds like a real mensch with a kind heart. I'm not sure why an accounting of the behavior of a woman's husband is so often needed to tell the woman's story. The reverse is not common.

But the unchallenged dismissiveness of this quote is, for me, the kicker:

You don’t really hear about randiness and mistreatment of women. That doesn’t prove it’s not there, but that’s not the lore.”

The LORE? Are you fucking kidding me?

I worked in Silicon Valley, and in technology startups in other regions, and have experienced sexual harassment and gender bias. It's as normal and constant a part of the landscape as the fabled foosball tables.

Where to begin with this quote, really? First, "randiness" isn't what causes sexual harassment. Men don't pressure junior female co-workers into unwanted sex because they're "randy." And the fact that it's not in the fucking "lore" doesn't mean it's not real.

I have no special knowledge about the truth, or lack thereof, in the Pao lawsuit. I know only what you and I and everyone else can read in the court documents, in the context of what I've experienced as a woman who has worked in the technology industry for about 20 years. I can't speak to the merit of this case. But, Earth to dudes: yes, this stuff is real and normal, and so are we.

Lucky for Streitfeld, and the rest of the world, that the Women in Technology conference happens to be under way today in Santa Clara. Stop by and get a clue.

Oh, and? I, too, cried when Steve Jobs died. And I still idolize Mr. Spock.

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