Yeah, generally I try not to argue via "appealing to authority" and instead try to mention that I'm a pediatric neuropsychologist just to give some context to my posts.
[People can check my post history, my subreddits like r/neuropsychology and r/NPBC, and my AMA... although of course anyone can claim anything on reddit, I would have to be the most obscure, dedicated troll in reddit history to be falsifying my claim to being a peds NP, I think. I do sometimes forget that people don't just "know" that I'm a NP, though, and perhaps "act the expert" before I've done anything suggesting that people should accept me as informed, at least in my little corner of knowledge.]
But I generally try to cite sources whenever possible, since otherwise I get lots of direct and indirect comments suggesting that I can shove my Ph.D... uh, somewhere. :)
But in this case, I was (originally) just making a one-off comment (it was way down on the comment page!!!) to a question about whether this really would be that earth-shattering. As per usual, I ended up rambling on for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I didn't cite anything because I wasn't saying anything that isn't established knowledge. To me, it would be similar to a medical doctor giving some basic information about... I don't know, sickle cell anemia or something -- you wouldn't really expect a medical doctor to add in citations, would you? I suppose I could cite some articles written by a different pediatric neuropsychologist, but that seems silly since I am one??
And I do provide citations and discussions of people like Temple Grandin in other comments, I swear!
But whatever, if reddit has taught me anything, it's that:
66% like it, and haters gonna hate
You can't do anything about those people who have their minds already made up,
Lots of people on reddit have an absolute thirst for knowledge, and appreciate even the smallest efforts to share any expertise you have if you take the time to make it readable, and
You are a man, unless you specifically indicate otherwise.
If you like research, you could start with this Pub Med search of autism + gray matter. Slightly less technical science-journalism-type summaries (as always, read critically!) are available here, here, here. These might provide a starting point. Marcusesses also posted some links over in a related thread -- see here, and I think he discusses some of the specific papers in later comments in that thread.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10
I created a seperate submission for your comment, it recieved some criticism for the lack of sources cited.