Talk:Heritability of autism/Archive 1

message: Hopelessly simplistic, as well as wrongly spelled.  Best taken out and a discussion of linkage added, or just a pointer to an article on genetics.  Midgley 22:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Mendelian" "model" 

message: I removed the unjustified weakness on the heritabilities based on my expertise with estimating these. KimvdLinde 15:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Heritabilities

message: Otherwise this is just yet another fork/duplicate.  Midgley 19:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heritability is only not [[Autism (causes)]] if it doesn't include the environmental hypotheses 

message: That suggests that there are two (or more) sorts of autism, that caused by specifics and that for whcih no cause is known.  Since tehre is no indication that we know a cause for even some autism that seems very like original research.  Midgley 19:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idiopathic autism? 

message: There appears to have been a lot more text here that got thrown out with l33tminion's revision as of 11:38, 7 March 2006 -- probably accidentally. I'm not qualified to determine whether it should be restored to the article, so I'm putting it here for reference. --Collabi 22:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If there was no edit summary it could be treated as vandalism, essentially. Neurodivergent 22:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've decided to replace the missing block of text. Epecially as it is replete with references to the relevant pieces of research, and therefore should not have been edited out in the first place. First of all, the block being replaced meets the verifiability critera (enough links to Scientific American and PubMed among others to satisfy even the most nit picking of critics) and it covers important research that is, in the case I've cited above (and almost certainly in the others) the subject of continuing research funded by government bodies such as the NIH in the United States, and the Medical Research Council here in the UK. If anyone wishes to remove it, STATE VALID REASONS FOR REMOVAL. Calilasseia 18:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Candidate gene loci 

message: The Autism article is accruing a lot of material that is more relevant to the theme here and is thus getting very redundant. I have relocated the text here and and I am writing a synopsis there. Malangthon 01:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Autism text relocation

message: Whoever characterized the thimerosal issue as "popular among parents" should think long and hard about the role of parents in the health of their children. --Leifern 20:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Popular among parents?" 

message: I've added the talk header because this page is hard to read; signing talk page entries would be helpful.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  talk header added 

message: I moved the following subsection, recently contributed to Causes of autism by User:Idealiot in this edit, to this talk page, as Causes of autism merely summarizes genetic causes and references Heritability of autism as the main page for the subject. I'm leaving this section here for genetics editors to see and use if they like. The only scholarly reference I've found to the 1993 publication in question is a 2000 paper by the same author. Eubulides 04:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Eub for keeping my words in sight, but really it does belong not here but on the autism causes pages (as I explained on that talk page).  I propose to abridge the piece and move it back to the causes page (draft abridgment follows immediately below). E wrote "The only scholarly reference I've found to the 1993 publication.." - but so what?  More to the point not a single fault of reasoning or evidence has been shown.  Loads of the greatest discoveries were totally ignored/derided for decades by "distinguished experts", so that comment is merely an exhibition of ignorance. And many people would consider Rimland's ARRI to be ultra-high in the scholarship rankings anyway -he did only revolutionise the field twice (debunking refrigerator mothers; first recognition of increase data).--Idealiot 14:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Not at all.  The theory is distinguished by a huge lack of promotion by its author, partly for reasons he briefly indicates in that tribute.  Persistent obstruction by negative busybodies does not help either (exactly as encountered by numerous greatest discoveries in the past).  Eub evidently adheres to a fallacious notion that establishment dogma = consensus = ok to present as absolute truth on the wiki pages.  "Useful" for making oneself popular but not much else. --Idealiot 00:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:UNDUE, particularly the segment "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not", and WP:COI, WP:REDFLAG (particularly the line "Claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Be particularly careful when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.") and WP:FRINGE.  If it's not supported by the mainstream, you will have to be patient until it is, not champion it here.  Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  WLU 12:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with WLU.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  General (multicausal) theories 

message: As I explained in Talk:Causes_of_autism#General (multicausal) theories this is a gene-expression theory that most people would file under genetics,
—This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following:  <<No, it is a causes of autism theory which they would file under causes and not genetics.  Just your peculiar idea there.  Any halfbaked excuse to remove from the causes page basically.>> so it belongs in this (genetics) page not the more-general causes page. As for the quality of the theory itself, I'm not convinced it deserves so much coverage here.
—This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following:  <<Sorry, why should anyone give a d about your personal opinion of its merits?  How about that of Rimland who was ever so slightly more distinguished in the field?  How many of those other theories did he mention in his ARRI?  What solid reasons for holding a low rating of it??? (If you consider ignoring by others to be a sound reason for ignoring then you put yourself in the same fool-bin as those who dismissed numerous great works such as stat thermodynamics, circulation of blood, plate tectonics, etc etc etc ad nauseam .  Go on just do it.)>>
One brief sentence would be plenty. 
—This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following:  <<How about applying that concept to your own excessive halfbakery here?>>
The test of a theory is not merely whether it has ever been refuted, but whether it is useful. —This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following: <<Who says so, and on what basis?>> This one has not been useful. 
—This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following: <>Evidence please.  I have already mentioned that numerous of the greatest (Very useful) discoveries were ignored for decades by narrowminded "superior" contemporaries.  Why should the usefulness opinion of mere you count for so much?  I have to say that your own efforts here have distinctly negative usefulness, indeed approximating to functioning as a troll.>>
I've found one mention of it in a peer-reviewed publication (by the same author). 
—This is part of a comment by Eubulides  which got interrupted by the following: <<which is a point I have already shown to be ridiculous in the heritability talk page (see preceding para here).>>
The author himself has apparently moved on to saying that the theory is confirmed by the fact that autism is associated with watching television, and that mercury amalgams are the cause of recent autism increases; see Clarke's 2006 tribute to Rimland, so the theory is not languishing for his lack of trying. Eubulides 16:35, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at all.  The theory is distinguished by a huge lack of promotion by its author, partly for reasons he briefly indicates in that tribute.  Persistent obstruction by negative busybodies does not help either (exactly as encountered by numerous greatest discoveries in the past).  Eub evidently adheres to a fallacious notion that establishment dogma = consensus = ok to present as absolute truth on the wiki pages.  "Useful" for making oneself popular but not much else. --Idealiot 00:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:UNDUE, particularly the segment "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not", and WP:COI, WP:REDFLAG (particularly the line "Claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Be particularly careful when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.") and WP:FRINGE.  If it's not supported by the mainstream, you will have to be patient until it is, not champion it here.  Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  WLU 12:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with WLU.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on Clarke's theory

message: I Just stumbled upon the following in this article about environmental factors and mental health in this latest issue of Environmental Health Perspectives:
Anyways, I don't see any mention of this gene in this article, so I thought I'd bring it up here. Yilloslime 18:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the heads-up. I added a brief mention. This part of the article needs a good rewrite to turn it into a decent review, but that's a bigger task. Eubulides 22:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  glutathione S-transferase polymorphs and ASD 

message: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Omim/getmap.cgi?chromosome=NRXN1&first=+Find+&start=5378 references NRXN1 as part of chromosome 2 and not 11, but I'm not a specialist, please confirm Agravier (talk) 22:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right you are. Thanks. I fixed it. Eubulides (talk) 21:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neurexin 1 

message: Today's Science has an editorial that has a nice categorization of autism-related genes. Perhaps we could use that instead of our home-grown one? Here's a citation (it's not in Pubmed yet so I'm leaving that blank for now):
* 
Eubulides (talk) 17:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization of autism-related genes 

message: Does the section on phenocopies have support in the literature on autism? The definition of that word:
::an environmentally induced phenotype mimicking one usually produced by a specific genotype.
implies really that we know the genotype (or a small set of genotypes) that cause autism. Also, fragile-X syndrome, Rett syndrome and tuberous sclerosis (TSC) are not environmentally induced diseases. The autism article makes it clear that it is diagnosed on behaviour, not cause or mechanism (though Rett syndrome is specifically excluded). That allows for someone with TSC to be diagnosed with autism, rather than it merely being described as "autism-like", which is the term this article uses.
The autism article divides it into syndromal and non-syndromal autism, with the former including TSC. This paper uses "idiopathic" (primary) and "secondary" to distinguish groups, with the latter including "a known environmental agent, chromosome abnormality, or single-gene disorder". The paper gives figures (5-10%) for the secondary-autism group, which is a figure this article doesn't contain. Colin°Talk 12:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest I had never read that section. I agree that it's not supported by the literature, and removed it. For what it's worth, that "5–10%" is growing with time, e.g., Steyaert & De La Marche 2008 () says 6–15%, and Beaudet 2007 () guesses that it will grow to 30–40% as the resolution of array CGH improves. Eubulides (talk) 17:43, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phenocopies 

message: PubMed reports the following new source, but it hasn't been published yet. Might be worth a look-see once it has been published.
: 
Eubulides (talk) 06:36, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Epub ahead of print" is "published," just not in print.  Usually, you can find a copy of the article on the journal's web site.68.46.183.96 (talk) 19:46, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, thanks for reminding me; the article was finally published on the journal's web site on November 12 (wow, that's quite a delay compared to PubMed). I'll take a look at it now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eubulides (talk • contribs) 19:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wall et al. on genome-wide search 

message: Here's a recent review that looks like it would be worthwhile, but I lack ready access to it.
: 
Eubulides (talk) 20:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kumar and Christian on genetics of ASD 

message: In the \autism\ subsection of the reelin article yesterday a big chunk of text was added by a new user; I'm not savvy in the autism-related Reelin studies, and think that some newly added phrases should be cut from the reelin article as loosely related to the reelin itself (big head size etc.) Maybe some of them could be shifted here? If interested, take a look. --CopperKettle 14:09, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Big addition to [[Reelin]] 

message: This page takes a long time to load, and part of this is due to the use of the standard Wikipedia citation templates such as . Recently developed faster & smaller templates (such as ) should make the page a lot smaller and faster to load, and I'd like to try them out here. Assuming they work well here, we can use them in other autism-related pages. Eubulides (talk) 20:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page loading efficiency and style 

message: I found the following line and thought it needed a "Who?" tag but apparently the reference was in the Wiki but just didn't link properly. 
"One critic of the pre-2006 twin studies said that they were too small and their results can be plausibly explained on non-genetic ground"
According to the wiki page source.   This refers to Jay Joseph's "The Missing Gene" a book by someone who is not a geneticist refuting (or attempting to) the idea of a genetic basis for various disorders.   I think this line is misleading, Mr. Joseph does not actually refer to these studies individually but rather makes blanket arguments against various tests for heritability like family studies and twin studies.  That said, his argument against twin studies is based on the idea that MZ twins tend to spend more time together and eat similarly than DZ twins and argues that it is probable (although it's questionable if this argument is made) that nutritional and environmental differences would be mistakenly correlated as genetic.   The study he cites falcizia & norton 1994 looked at twins aged 9 to 18.  So while this may well be good criticism for other twin studies it seems way off for a disease that has far more often than not presented by 36 months.
He also cites the failure to find commonalities in all genome wide searches.  Which he attributes to Blaxill.  Blaxill is also not a professional in the field and is at best somewhat biased.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.211.168.16 (talk) 22:11, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jay Joseph: Missing Gene 

message: My only request is that you read before you delete:
The Journal of Evolutionary Psychology just published a paper that supports the hypothesis that the confirmed neanderthal admixture event(s) provided cognitive variations that were subsequently selected for, sometimes causing a locus of deleterious recombinations in the genomes of children with parents who selected one another for those characteristics: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP09207238.pdf
:* "People on the autism spectrum are conceptualized here as ecologically competent individuals that could have been adept at learning and implementing hunting and gathering skills in the ancestral environment."
:* "The autism continuum could represent a remnant of genetic introgression that took place before humans were the lone species in our genus.  Perhaps some of the genes for autism evolved not in our direct ancestral line but in a solitary subspecies which later merged genetically with our line of descent through gene flow."
:* "Many of the behavioral and cognitive tendencies that autistic individuals exhibit are viewed here as adaptations that would have complemented a solitary lifestyle. For example, the obsessive, repetitive and systemizing tendencies in autism, which can be mistakenly applied toward activities such as block stacking today, may have been focused by hunger and thirst toward successful food procurement in the ancestral past. Both solitary mammals and autistic individuals are low on measures of gregariousness, socialization, direct gazing, eye contact, facial expression, facial recognition, emotional engagement, affiliative need and other social behaviors. The evolution of the neurological tendencies in solitary species that predispose them toward being introverted and reclusive may hold important clues for the evolution of the autism spectrum and the natural selection of autism genes."
:* "This article emphasizes that individuals on the autism spectrum may have only been partially solitary, that natural selection may have only favored subclinical autistic traits and that the most severe cases of autism may be due to assortative mating. "
:* "Unfortunately, the genetics, molecular biology and neuroscience of autism are still, relative to many other neurological disorders, shrouded with uncertainty due to their highly complex nature (O’Roak and State, 2008)."
:* "A portion of this complexity and uncertainty arises from the relatively large number of distinct susceptibility genes that have been identified, many of which can be completely absent even in pronounced autism (Freitag, 2007). This genetic heterogeneity may be responsible for the clinical heterogeneity..."
:* "1. isolated pockets of humans can remain reproductively insulated for long enough to evolve discrepant ecological strategies; 2. such populations can quickly (less than 40,000 years in the South American and Asian pygmies; Cavalli-Sforza, 1986) develop features that vary markedly from the norm; 3. these traits can involve multiple genes at different loci; and 4. interbreeding can result in either continuous or polymorphic variation in subsequent generations. It is interesting to note that, as these indigenous people become assimilated into other gene pools, the genes for short stature will persist and may affect phenotypic variability in sporadic and unpredictable ways for a long time to come."
:* "Like other polygenic, continuous traits, the mutations responsible for autism could have been maintained by “environmental heterogeneity,” a form of balancing selection. In other words, the genes responsible for autism may have remained in our gene pool because as social-environmental conditions fluctuated in the past, discrepant genetic polymorphisms, or “multiple alternate alleles,” were favored."
Here are some peer reviewed sources that imply a link between the genes garnered via neanderthal admixture and the genes that code for ASDs:
:* Brain development after birth differs between Neanderthals and modern humans (2010, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) B]
::"The development of cognitive abilities during individual growth is linked to the maturation of the underlying neural circuitry: in humans, major internal brain reorganization has been documented until adolescence, and even subtle alterations of pre- and perinatal brain development have been linked to changes of the neural wiring pattern that affect behavior and cognition [9]. The uniquely modern human pattern of early brain development is particularly interesting in the light of the recent breakthroughs in the Neanderthal genome project [10], which identified genes relevant to cognition that are derived in living humans. We speculate that a shift away from the ancestral pattern of brain development occurring in early Homo sapiens underlies brain reorganization and that the associated cognitive differences made this growth pattern a target for positive selection in modern humans."
:* A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome
::"Mutations in CADPS2 have been implicated in autism (67), as have mutations in AUTS2 (68)."
:* Autism, the Integrations of ‘Difference’ and the Origins of Modern Human Behaviour (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research)
The fact that the male side of the admixture(s) was/were strictly neanderthal would mean that we share none of their mtDNA.  This explains the lack of mtDNA abnormality and the existence of mitochondrial dysfunction in people with ASDs: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2350/12/50
:* "the frequent observation of concomitant mitochondrial dysfunction and ASD could be due to nuclear factors influencing mitochondrion functions or to a more complex interplay between the nucleus and the mitochondrion/mtDNA."
The neanderthal haplotype described in this 2011 paper is x-linked: http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/01/25/molbev.msr024.full.pdf+html
:The abstract finishes by saying: "It indicates a very early admixture between expanding African migrants and Neandertals prior to or very early on the route of the out-of-Africa expansion that led to the successful colonization of the planet."  [On a side note: This could also explain the unique, cyclical pattern of brutal invasion, cultural assimilation, and intermarriage that is so common in the written history of human civilization.  Evidence of mostly patrilineal migrations among early AMHs is just coming out: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/24/1100723108 "Ancient DNA reveals male diffusion through the Neolithic Mediterranean route" (May 2, 2011)]
More evidence is cited in this wrongplanet thread: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp3696657.html#3696657  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slartibartfastibast (talk • contribs) 21:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the same content as is on talk:Asperger syndrome.  I think it is best to keep the discussion there where it may attract more viewers, as this article is fairly low traffic.  —Soap— 21:53, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It has received no attention there.  I copied it here in the hopes that someone would respond.  Why has nobody else analyzed this or given the go-ahead to put it in the main article?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slartibartfastibast (talk • contribs) 22:07, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neanderthal Admixture Hypothesis 

message: The following comment is from the recently published Nature article "Brain cell genomes show their individuality"
:"One of the conclusions of studies like this - and the Bruder et al study a few years ago on somatic copy number mosaicism - is that twin studies are not an accurate measure of the geneticness of any given disorder or trait. Nature recently published a set of features on autism for example which repeated the well known claim that twin studies show that autism has an environmental component. They don't. What they show is that there is a component that isn't inherited. That component could be environmental but as this result and others show it could also be genetic. Indeed some studies have suggested that as much as 90% of autism may be genetic and yet, many years ago, Nature had a feature quoting Susan Folstein as claiming that roughly 10% of people with autism showed evidence for mosaicism, which wouldn't be picked up in a twin study despite being genetic. Its possible therefore that autism may be much more strongly genetic that hinted at by twin studies." -Michael Chisnall (November 16, 2011 04:30 AM)
Slartibartfastibast (talk) 01:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  An important distinction 

message: If someone has the data, it would be great to add a section or Wiki article re the worldwide incidence rate of autism, as has been done w/schizophrenia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_schizophrenia
Phantom in ca (talk) 05:42, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epidemiology of Autism? 

message: * 
With two syndromes, Fragile-X syndrome and Tuberous sclerosis, counting for between 5 and 9% of all ASD patients (according to the above), syndromal cases of autism deserve greater prominence in the article (and Causes of autism, etc). This would also help emphasise that there are some genetic conditions that we know are strongly associated with autism, not just some vague increase in risk waiting for an environmental factor to occur. Colin°Talk 21:52, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I  a brief note to this article. The article is currently quite dated (most of the chromosome stuff is about 4 or 5 years old now, and needs to be drastically revised or thrown out), but it'll take some work to fix it. Eubulides (talk) 06:25, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syndromic autism 

message: This article has recently been edited by students as part of their course work for a university course.  As part of the quality metrics for the education program, we would like to determine what level of burden is placed on Wikipedia's editors by student coursework.
If you are an editor of this article who spent time correcting edits to it made by the students, please tell us how much time you spent on cleaning up the article.  Please note that we are asking you to estimate only the negative effects of the students' work.  If the students added good material but you spent time formatting it or making it conform to the manual of style, or copyediting it, then the material added was still a net benefit, and the work you did improved it further.  If on the other hand the students added material that had to be removed, or removed good material which you had to replace, please let us know how much time you had to spend making those corrections. This includes time you may have spent posting to the students' talk pages, or to Wikipedia noticeboards, or working with them on IRC, or any other time you spent which was required to fix problems created by the students' edits. Any work you did as a Wikipedia Ambassador for that student's class should not be counted.
Please rate the amount of time spent as follows:
* 0 -No unproductive work to clean up
* 1 - A few minutes of work needed
* 2 - Between a few minutes and half an hour of work needed
* 3 - Half an hour to an hour of work needed
* 4 - More than an hour of work needed
Please also add any comments you feel may be helpful. We welcome ratings from multiple editors on the same article. Add your input here. Thanks! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Impact of recent student edits

message: Autism speaks has information about the Autism Genome Project refer to the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange.  I think that the AGRE has replaced the AGP and this needs to be reflected in the article.  More could be written about the AGRE as well. --FUNKAMATIC   ~talk 19:56, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Autism Genome Project change 

message: "traceable to a genetic cause may grow to 30–40%"  -- This undefended statement seems to predict that only 30 to 40% of autism will ever be explained through genetic causes (often called "risk factors").  This should be reworded, since there is no basis offered for an upper limit to the percentage.  The dangers of over-interpretation of GWA studies are well documented in the article and is not being questioned here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arm42 (talk • contribs) 05:01, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: 'agreed.'  I'll see if I can find the time to do it later if no one else gets to it.--FUNKAMATIC   ~talk 19:58, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limit to the percentage of genetically explained autism? 

message: Since no clear number is stated for percentage of autism cases which are heritable, it seems appropriate to mention the approximate percentages of non-heritable causes. 
Maternal antibodies, Maternal immune activation, auto antibodies, fraternal twin concordance being higher than sibling concordance, and the study from Stanford attributing much greater than 10% to non genetic causes. 
All this could be included.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.198.86.118 (talk) 01:25, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion of non genetic causes is appropriate 

message: Are ethnic cetlic people more likely to have autism? The reason why the vaccine-autism link is cited by celtic people is because amish people have a very low rate of autism and amish are Germanic people. All the people who claim vaccines cause autism are ethnically celtic so celtic people seem to have autism at a higher rate that Germanic people. Why do not scientist split Germanic people from celtic people in their studies?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.103.134.70 (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnic Celts and autism 

message: This page incorrectly interprets the meaning of heritability estimates. From the page: 
"The heritability of autism is the proportion of autism that can be explained by genetic variation; if the heritability of a condition is high, then the condition is considered to be primarily genetic." 
This is exactly wrong, as the heritability page that the sentence link to clearly explains: 
"Heritability measures the fraction of phenotype variability that can be attributed to genetic variation. This is not the same as saying that this fraction of an individual phenotype is caused by genetics."
And later on general heritability page
"Heritability describes the population, not individuals within that population. For example, It is incorrect to say that since the heritability of a personality trait is about .6, that means that 60% of your personality is inherited from your parents and 40% comes from the environment."
A more accurate wording would be along the lines of:
"The heritability of autism estimates the how much of the variability in autistic and non-autistic traits within a particular population stems from variation in the population's underlying genetic make-up and how much stems from environmental variation. Heritability varies between populations and environments and does not provide a measure of how much a particular person's symptoms (or lack thereof) are caused by their genes."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.199.119 (talk) 20:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heritability Explanation 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Heritability of autism. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060505122037/http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/1998_BCetal_Maths.pdf to http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/1998_BCetal_Maths.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060505121710/http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/1997_BCetal_Engineer.pdf to http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/1997_BCetal_Engineer.pdf
*Added  tag to http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297%2807%2900035-3
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080417032301/http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297%2807%2900017-1 to http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297%2807%2900017-1
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:39, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Heritability of autism. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080708201740/http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/114-7/focus.html to http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/114-7/focus.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:56, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified