what do you all think of this?

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(clicky)MIT senior research scientists warns that half of all American children will be autistic by 2025, due at least in part to Roundup use in American farming

Well, I've seen similar reports over the last two years and never with substantial evidence.

In this case, the researcher has no credentials that relate to autism or psychology. She may be a credible scientist... but her Ph.D. is in COMPUTER SCIENCE and ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. She only has a bachelor's in biophysics. She isn't credible in regards to this topic.

Stephanie Seneff, the mentioned scientist, works in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory where they build things like speech recognition software, natural language processing algorithms, and generally improving human-computer interactions.

The article linked starts off by using a false claim of authority. They take a scientist with no credentials in the subject matter, give claim of scientific achievement, and then leave out all relevant context. That is an unethical form of reporting or journalism, it's propaganda at the very least, written to serve the bias of the author. Out of the 170 published papers, only 10 relate to medicine. She was the primary author for 7 of those medical articles. Most of those were about how different diseases, such as Alzheimers or Autism, can be improved with the use of natural language processing computer programs. She only has one or two published papers about environmental toxins and human health, but I don't know which journals, and she attends a lot of conferences on the subject talking about it, but there has been no study ever showing causation.

What the article did was twist the information to support their bias.

I wonder how they came to the conclusion that it would be half of all children, as opposed to say a quarter or 3/8ths? how do they come up with the numbers?

Sounds like a scare article, and it's unethical as all hell. Primary issues
-As pointed out, this scientist has NO RIGHT to talk about autism, etc
-Any links between autism and 3rd party factors are shaky at best. More research needs to be done on the topic. However, until I find a convincing study that concludes GMOs, etc truly cause autism, I'll disregard any of the BS. It's a huge issue.
-Again, like ALL these articles, there's this whole idea of stigmatizing autism as if it were some kind of autism. This is by FAR the worst kind of reporting. Seriously, imagine if this were "Increase in food production due to GMOs will substantially increase minority populations".

Unethical as hell. Disregard. Just be glad this isn't on a big news site.

I stopped reading at "Autism-Vaccine Cover-up".

Funny how autism predates Roundup.

Don't know about this but there was a Metastudy done recently that showed increased autism among children whose parents lived near farm fields.

Along with other studies linking autism to exposure to smog/pollution and proximity to highways there seems to be some link between autism and environmental poisoning.

If so, it is likely one cause but not the cause. In other words there looks to be more then one thing that can bring it on.

it just seems to me, that if any one thing [even among many] can be proven to have an effect one way or another on autism, that it deserves to be investigated further.

nature versus nurture. the genes can exist that code for the likelihood of various dysfunctions, but often they need an environmental factor to push them that last step into manifestation. it seems to me we can only pick on one environmental factor at a time in a process of gradual elimination. which is less unpleasant- having a good long look at Roundup, or having a good long look at some form of genetic manipulation?

I don't believe half the kids will be autistic, and that's just ten years from now, not even a generation. How can that be when the great majority of people arent autistic?

plus I dont believe farming has anything to do with it. Autism is genetic and runs in families.