Are there any people with autism actually doing research?

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Or are all of the people studying autism neurotypical? How many decided to focus on autism because of a child or close relative with autism?

Sorry if this has been discussed before, didn't find anything when I searched.

It doesn't seem like anyone is doing much of any research on Autism, which is sad in my opinion. I'll bet if researchers actually set their minds to researching things like the causes of Autism and other elements of it....they'd eventually find answers. I think a lot of it is pure laziness.

I guess there's no money in it.

Lorna Wing has an autistic son.

I am autistic and I have 5 children also all diagnosed. I have just competed a PG Cert Autism. My colleague is a researcher and just completing a PhD in Autistic Intelligence. I just graduated from Birmingham University and Barbara Jacobs is completing at Leicester University.

The research that we have completed is 'in the field' on the ground...no laboratories just reality. It is all pretty mindblowing and I am up to date on all published research and also some unpublished.

To research autism is to live and breath it, study it and understand it.

And in my opinion many of the well known researchers are probably on the spectrum too! But that is just my opinion. I have 'come out' and it is a totally exhilarating experience

www.jelibean.com

I think Simon Baron Cohen has a profoundly autistic brother or cousin or something. I know his name is Timothy but I can't remember how he is related.

Michelle Dawson is an autistic researcher attached to the Universite de Montreal. Here is her blog: http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com

Michelle is awesome!

That's heartening!

I'm probably going to research rehab technology once I get my degree; does that count?

I've seen this trend, actually, at the disablity services office at my school--when I talk to the other kids, a lot of them want to become professionals of some sort, like social workers, psychologists, occupational/physical therapists, doctors, or in my case biomedical engineering. I think we feel the need to use the opportunity to go to school--which many of us know we are very lucky to have gotten--to do something about the injustices that other people with disabilities have to face. I only hope we can keep our idealism once we get into the professional world. I know it's worked for at least some, because there are people with disabilities working in the disability services office itself.

I'm trying to! I'm applying for linguistic PhD-posts to study autistic language and/or autistic language learning. I'll know about one of the posts in a couple of months, I'll update you then...

Best of luck to LipStickKiller.

I think that another interesting question is how many of us are involved in other areas of research. I think that a lot of aspies and auties exist who have an interest in a range of research. Maybe we should have a poll to try to find out about the research interests of the community.

It doesn't seem like anyone is doing much of any research on Autism

There are new papers coming out literally EVERY DAY!

Sorry just noticed you are a newbie! Welcome

Yes, she is great. And she has no formal quals and Laurent Mottron - an autism specialist had the insight and intelligence to employ her in his lab and in relation to cutting edge research as a specialist on the basis of her phenomenal autistic brain. There should be more like him! He saw skills and talents and brilliance where other people (Canadian Post) saw arm scars and oddity and difficulty.

Larry Arnold is doing research and completing a PhD.. His blog is

http://laurentius-rex.blogspot.com/

I have advised researchers and work with a team at MIT mostly on the basis of my extensive knowledge of a wide variety of autistic experiences and my ability to describe them without often falling back on stereotypes or terms like "theory of mind".

I also work with a group called AASPIRE that is a partnership between autistic people and researchers. Right now we are researching the healthcare experiences of autistic people, disabled nonautistic people, and nondisabled nonautistic people.