Has anyone considered the possibility that Autism and Aspergers are more prevalent in Caucasians??
That could certianly be the case, if genetic links are ever proven.
Or social expectations are higher/ more difficult for someone with spectrum traits to meet. Or the opposite, leading to lots of people with spectrum traits to show up and have children. Social expectations are a big part of the explanation for ASD's, but of course fashion dictates that they largely be ignored. After all we cannot have an explanation of Autism which blames anyone.
You know as much as you and me tend to disagree on things, every so often you'll say that sits well with me and makes perfect sense. I think you are spot on re: social expectations, but this is also true for a lot of mental disorders. This is also begs the question how many of those kids were diagnosed on the mild end of the spectrum?
I like to say something sensible now and then. It breaks up the monotony
The thing with ASD's is that unlike other mental disorders, they are defined in terms of social expectations, so they would be the best way of investigating them and proving results. I think reading the study might be interesting and we should see if this person has distinguished them in the results, at the minute I can't find them, although you can find the funding information by searching for "Environmental Factors in the Etiology of autism", they are getting serious amounts of money to do this research by looking at it.
Really its a mathematical biology problem for the most part, there is a lot of clever maths which would be very good for illustrating the social expectations effect. Maybe I could do it for a PhD, if I could find the right supervisor.