Reply #9: Here's the "study".

[Igel]

http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/profiles/Waldman/AUTISM-WALDMAN-NICHOLSON-ADILOV.pdf

I'm not convinced it's not a spoof. I've seen some serious ones. And in this case, what he's spoofing is serious. There's non-spoof in the article, but a good spoof has to have non-spoofy bits.

Waldman's done stuff with autism before, Google scholar tells me; it's an interest, so he's probably done the readings for other things. And I suspect that at some point he read some correlation taken to be fact, and mocked it with some colleagues or RAs. After all, spurious correlations are the bane of researchers, and the playthings of simple minds. (Notice how increased rainfall immediately gets translated into mercury exposure ... at least for 1-year-olds who sit out in the rain all day.)

Note that there are three "important" studies on which they base their methodology; one looks at the effect of abortion on crime (2001), another looks at police hiring/electoral cycles on crime, and a third looks at month of birth as effecting educational outcome (compulsory school attendance versus schooling and earnings). Hardly "important". And other articles that might rightly be mocked for confusing correlation with causality--perhaps contributing factors, but good luck showing it.

It might be serious; but right now, having read most of it, I'm agnostic on the matter.