Do You Think Autism Experts Use This Forum To Gain Insight

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I'm sure that many professionals lurk around here.

Who wouldn't want to lurk around on a forum with so many... interesting characters.

I doubt people self-reporting \ self-analysing is of much benefit to a professional in a professional context, and that's the majority of the thread types on here. Many of the remaining threads are people arguing against things that no professional thinks anyway (that autistic people have no empathy, that autistic people never marry and so on).

People doing studies do come on to get participants but only for that, and those studies tend to be trying to link autism with "something else". I imagine a whole bunch of students at uni doing their dissertations on things like "Do autistic people like pancakes", they construct a quiz with questions like "Do you feel awkward in social situations?" so they can determine the autistic respondents from the non-autistic, then finally ask "Do you like pancakes?"

I think the latest study was if autistic people felt physical sensations they couldn't explain. Beats me what they were getting at.

^SaveFerris, I've experienced stuff like that. Mostly it's been the sensation of sitting on something wet, but when I feel my pants and the seat, everything is dry.

Well, I thought-of a couple of things, your "foot episode" might've been, SaveFerris..... If you were doing something, before you went to the bathroom, that made your foot fall asleep, and it didn't register in your brain, until you were standing-still (a sort-of tingling feeling); or, it could be that Diabetes thing where people get tingling feelings----or, sometimes, a "spike" of something (like a "shooting" of something, underneath the skin).

In response to the OP: If there are professionals checking-out this site, their research isn't showing that they've learned, anything----cuz, SOMEBODY needs to be talking to ADULTS, for-a-change. What----do they think people just grow-out-of Autism, or something? I get so SICK-of-it, sometimes (people not talking to adults----and, I mean OLDER adults; they're beginning to talk to late-teens / 20-somethings, but I guess they figure there's nothing they can do, for us, and that we've made it, THIS far)! !

Back when I suspected ASD I struggled to relate to the broad/general content of books and factual pieces on ASD, even personal blogs were too individual/specific to relate to.

I found WP by searching for personal experiences of ASD. Reading posts and talking to people here helped me to understand a picture that was much bigger... everyone on the spectrum is different.

If there are people using this site for research/insight I reckon they are more likely to be influenced by the social model of disability than the medical model and are probably students.
Maybe WP could be of use in a similar way to Wikipedia, good for initial research and terminology.