Autism & Television: Total BS
According to the worst piece of research I’ve ever seen, watching more TV causes Autism. Nodir Adilov, Sean Nicholson, and Michael Waldman should be publicly scolded for letting this be published. Time, in a scathing article titled A Bizarre Study Suggests That Watching TV Causes Autism, summarizes:
Lo and behold, Waldman and colleagues found that reported autism cases within certain counties in California and Pennsylvania rose at rates that closely tracked cable subscriptions, rising fastest in counties with fastest-growing cable. The same was true of autism and rainfall patterns in California, Pennsylvania and Washington State. Their oddly definitive conclusions: “Approximately 17% of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s was due to the growth of cable television,” and “just under 40% of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation.”
Ignoring the absurd problems that arise when attempting to confuse causality with correlation, the very idea that watching television, a process which occurs late in a child’s life, causes autism, a condition which is usually there by birth, is ludicrous!
This is a bad PR move on Cornell’s part. Aren’t Ivies supposed to be smart?
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14 Responses to “Autism & Television: Total BS”
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FYI, I’ve posted a formal critique here.
How about seriously studying the paternal age connection. Even the maternal and paternal grandfather’s paternal age. So many conditions are found to increase maybe because of the spontaneous mutations and/or breakages that increase as men The ability to destroy damaged sperm decreases as men age. If we want to decrease suffering we have seriously look at all the studies over 60 years on the diseases/conditions linked with older fathers. The connection of people on the autistic spectrum having autistic or schizophrenic children should be publicized. Also all the studies on the robust effect of advanced paternal age on the incidence of schizophrenia. More the 26% of schizophrenia is linked to older fathers,and not to older mothers.
I attended the seminar where the paper was presented. The authors have workshopped their idea with doctors at the UPenn Med School. The MD’s generally support running experimental studies to determine whether or not TV is a factor. The MD’s noted that that when children are young, their brain development is highly influentiable by external stimuli. Hence the theory posited by Waldman et al is not without merit.
Waldman et al note that science has ruled out the autism-vaccination link. However, reports of very low prevalance rates in the Amish of austism that could be falsely attributed to vaccination could also be attributed to a lack of television. Moreover, television is not a stimuli that our brain evolved to process.
But clearly, the author of this post has missed the point. By claiming the authors confuse correlation with causality, the author sets up a straw man, and ultimately fails to critique the instrumental variables method used by the Waldman et al. This blogger should review the statistical literature on how to determine causal relationships from non-experimental data and then critique the method.
In every interview that Waldman has given, he is careful to disclaim “we haven’t proved a theory, merely suggested it.”
I am a statistician and my 7-year-old son has autism. Coincidentally I got my Ph.D. degree from Cornell in 1995 but I did not know these authors since they were in the business school.
We live in Taiwan. When my son was a baby, I bought an English learning package, called Disney World of English. This package contains VCDs, CDs and books and is very popular in Asian countries, including Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong … etc.
We did not let my son watch too much TV but let him listen to the CDs and read books to him. My son was fascinated with the words and songs … taught in the package and lost his interest in interacting with people.
Even we spoke Chinese (Mandarin) at home, my son’s first language (about 1.5 years old) was in English. He also learned colors and shapes from these materials (1.7) before he could call me mom. We then recognized his problem (around 1.8) and limited his exposure to these things. However he seemed to catch the phonic rule of English and was able to pronounce words such as “pseudorhombus” which appeared in his other books. Yes, he is also hyperlexic in English. It is very easy to trace where my son’s problem came from.
As a statistician, I of course understand correlation does not imply causal relationship. However as a mother, I believe that my son’s autistic trait (I believe his father has mild Asperger Syndrome) was triggered by these unhealthy indoor activities. After several years of intervention, now he is a gifted boy in math and likes to interact with people in his unique way although he still has some symptoms of autism like avoiding eye contact … For his case, if he had no exposure to the things that I mentioned above, I believe that he would have a more normal developmental path.
I think that this study is just a pioneer work that can motivate researchers to collect more direct data to prove such a hypothesis. It also gives a warning to parents who are either too busy to take their kids out or believe in early education without
So listening to CD’s and reading books to Children also cause Autism? I think this research is faulty and hate to see that it is being so widely distributed in the media. A LOT more research would need to be done to convince me. Common sense would say that parking an infant in front of a televison is not a good thing and may have lasting effects, but I don’t believe it causes autism.
It is believed that autism has multiple causes. Genetic and environmental factors interact with each other which makes it more difficult to trace the effect of a single factor. Only well-designed experiments can establish causal relationship. For observational studies, there exist confounding factors that may lead the researchers to reverse the true relationship of cause and effect.
Technology has provided us more choices as an individual as well as a parent. Listening to music or reading books of course does not cause autism. However when a baby tended to love a particular type of books of music, parents tended to give him/her more of such things if they looked no harm. My son’s first fascination was the alphabet song which “repeated” in different forms over and over again in his VCDs, CDs, and books. C-A-T spells cat, M-A-T spells mat, B-A-T spells bat … Other topics such as colors, shapes, … were taught in a similar way with patterns and rhymes. One day when my son was four, he saw a bottle of Vitamin (C+E) and quickly said “this equals to H”. (C + E = 3 + 5 = 8 = H)
My son’s or other kids’ obsessive interests related to TV or the media may be a “result” of the autistic traits. It does not provide scientifically sound evidence to blame these things are the “cause” of autism.
However after several years of intervention, I have seen changes in my son despite of the genetic root. This means that the environment factor does play an essential role in a person’s development. For autistic people, the social world is too dynamic. On the other hand, the media provides more predictable and systemized information. For a little kid with some autistic traits who has not developed a way of communication with the world and people around him, providing him/her with too structured information may deprive his opportunity to learn how to adapt to the real world.
I am not trying to prove or disapprove a big theory using one single example. Recollecting these unhappy memories is especially painful to me. I posted my personal experience is just because this paper coincides with what I have concluded for my son’s case in the past few years. I do suspect that the rise of autism diagnoses is partly related to the interaction between genetic and environmental factors.
Please see this response to popular press about the “study”, written by an actual autism researcher at Cornell.
http://cornelldailysun.com/node/19539
As a CU biology alum and staff member, I was appalled that CU issued a press release about a speculative correlational study without peer review. I saw the authors speak on the subject and was appalled by their use of the words “cause” and “trigger”, when they had no biological mechanism to even propose. “We’re not brain scientists” was their flippant reponse. Perhaps we should all go publish non-peer-reviewed economics papers. They seemed to have forgotten one of the most basic things you learn in statistics – correlation is not the same as causation.
Is it not possible that children with autism who are exposed to more television at a younger age (as babies) might not be getting that additional exposure because of a parent/caregiver’s discouragement at the lack of response from the child? In other words, perhaps the autism leads to more television- viewing instead of the television-viewing being what causes the autism.
What an incredibly intelligent post! The author chastizes Cornell professors for using bad science while he/she him/her self relies entirely on the opinion of a Time magazine journalist. That’s good science right there. In fairness, the author does demonstrate proof of a seventh grade education by pointing out “correlation does not imply…” however, a less intellectually lazy person would realize that there are things that do imply causation. And had he read the paper by Waldman, Nicholson, and Adilov, he would realize that they do not base their claims of causation on simple correlation.
I believe we should applaud the authors of Cornell’s study. They are indeed very careful on saying that the study is not conclusive. Good research often leads to hot debate and this is good for society. My guess is that a lot of research will be made on this subject motivated by this study, clarifying possible links between tv (or some other factor associated to tv) and autism, or just rejecting them. And this is how science evolves.
Remember that the first studies suggesting smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer were also heavily criticized. The evidence presented was against current beliefs (most doctors used to smoke in the 1940s). The same happened with the link between H. pylori and ulcer/gastritis. It was also against current beliefs. The same might be happening in this case.
The study is faulty because it looks at factor A and says that A implies B. It is missing several other variables. There are other factors that could be causing both A and B to occur simultaneously. Here is an example. Most believe that there is a genetic predisposition to Autism. Many adults who show signs of Autism carry the predisposition. They are not big with social interaction, don’t look people in the eye, and tend to stay with their books. Do you know where you find a lot of these people? They tend to feel more comfortable in technical fields (engineering, programming, etc.). Hey! There’s a huge glut of those industries in the upper West Coast! Techies also love their technology. So, they have the monetary resources and desire to have cable, satellite, DVRs, etc. It could be that there are just more genetically predisposed people in those areas. That is just one of many variables not looked at.
I have a son with Autism. He did not like to watch TV when he was little, so he watched almost none. My husband and I are both computer programmers. I am in Mensa. Ever since I was little, people have described me as having an “Engineer’s personality”. My son has gotten early intervention and will enter Kindergarten next fall. He will be mainstreamed and is doing better every day. I have no doubt that he will catch up to the other kids his age while in elementary school. Early intervention is the key. Even Waldman stated he was using it with his child while having the TV off. So, which is the cause for the improvement?
The poster who comments that the link between cancer and smoking was met with sketicism seems on the right track.
Science journalist Gregg Easterbrook seems similarly on target….wonder if all of the “harmless” Baby Einstein videos will one day be seen as nightmarish mistake?? Hmmm…the whole economy might come crashing down…no tv/babysitter…advertising slump….gee, I wonder if the media industrial complex might try to supress such research. And if not autism…well, the shooter at Virgina Tech just had a penchant for violent videos. Why not turn off the plug-in drug????
We have an autistic daughter who didn’t get vaccinated, never had any ear infections, didn’t take any antibiotics, never ate dairy, and mom was super-healthy all through pregnancy. The only thing we slacked off on is TV. We let her watch more than her share of TV since birth. I don’t know whether TV causes autism, but this is the last remaining factor for us. Since stopping TV, we have seen significant improvements. I am a scientist, and I am generally skeptical about these things, but in this case I do not care whether this study is peer reviewed or scientifically rigorous. It makes sense to me, and that’s all that matters. All parents should be alerted that there could be a link between TV and autism, however weak the case may be. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under age 2 should not watch any TV at all. They probably did not have autism in mind when they said that, but it seem too close for comfort. I am not taking any more chances. My kid is not going to spend any more time in front of the TV. Even if this study is completely wrong, what’s the worse that could happen? My kid will miss out on TV. Is that such a bad thing?
TV does not cause autism or it would have been very high years ago when the sets gave off more radiation than now.
Today LCD TV’s have no dangerous emissions.
Common sense tells us people that watch TV will be intelligent and communicative as they pick up language by aural and visual stimulation and repitition.
What does cause autism?
Mercury is the most toxic non radioactive element and can be filmed destroying brain cells as opposed to stimulating them.
It does this at the level of one vaccine diluted uniformly through a babies body.
Babies get more than a dozen such vaccines.
There are many technical reasons why mercury is to blame at levels 100’s of times less than in vaccines.
The cost of truth is too high for society to bear.
Waldman has his history of autism but ignores the fact that the ealry cases had massive exposure to mercury.
With everyone getting vaccines we have resistant or genetically resistant humans to at times frankly lethal doses of mercury.
The babies are incredible that they can get their heads blown up to twice the size in one day after mercury vaccines and survive.
Adults given the same vaccines are seriously ill. So these baby vaccines are FORBIDDEN to be used for people that talk for obvious reasons.