What do you think of this list of famous aspies?

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So I was looking at this site the other day and I'm wondering where they came up with some of their choices:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_au ... r_syndrome

I mean I know Spielberg, Gary Numan and Craig Nicholls are all confirmed aspies...

But then they list HP Lovecraft who lived long before Asperger's was accepted in the psychiatric community (I believe even before Hans Asperger but I could be wrong).

And they have that footnote for Dan Aykroyd which implies some people think he was just joking when he said he had it (I believe he does have it, because after I heard he had it I saw him on SNL and believe I did recognize the behavior of someone masking their aspie traits... plus the Coneheads sketch became SO much more funny once I found out he was an aspie)

Then they list Thom Yorke and Syd Barrett as aspies which just seems like guesswork to me... and they list Courtney Love?!?!?! that just seems completely preposterous to me.

So what do you guys think of the accuracy of this list?

I think it is a little dubious, as it is very hard to judge famous people from what you see of them in public. It seems many famous people have their public persona, which will be different from the way they are with friends and family.

I mean I haven't seen anything of Micheal Palin that would lead me to believe he has AS - he comes across as very personable and able to deal with change very well.

Rory McGrath has been described as having autistic qualities, as he has a fantastic memory for things like wild birds' latin names, and the periodic table, and he is a bit odd ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_mcgrath

I also feel the list (which I aren't keen on anyway) is dubious.

People like Syd Barret (Pink Floyd), Gary Newman, Stephen Spielberg and michael Palin would be described as 'popular aspies.'

They may have a small amount of AS but it doesn't impinge on their lives much and they have huge motivation and ambition to get to where they are now.

If they do have AS they are very different from me!!

It was once implied that Keanu Reeves has AS...


It seems the autisitc likes to look at famous who have similar traits(even a small amount) to boost our image and self esteem.

While either you have it or you don't, AS being a part of a whole spectrum of Autistic Behavioral Traits, incorporates a broad range of effects, along with a broad range of dealing with those effects. I am of the opinion that the realm of differences in human thought are disbursed across a much more widely scattered field than what the field of psychology has been able to bring in to focus.

That being said, the "Autistic Spectrum" is a big tent with plenty of room for a variety of folks. Sure there's plenty of conjecture about non-confirmed Aspergian-like people (I think Jimi Hendrix had more traits than some people on the Wiki list), but the AS label only comes from the relatively young and not-so-exact science of psychology. Who's to say if such diagnostic pigeon holes are too large or too small when only traces and traits make up the criteria for diagnosis and not a concrete physical manifestation--short of brain scans which only illustrate similarities among groups.

P.S. I vote for the dog with the puffy tail.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pnivTYn-dps&search=funny