"Whose side is Robin P Clarke on?"

Since the publication of the theory, three entrenched factions have appeared in the autism causation world. A first faction believes autism can never be a problem, so cannot need curing or be a disorder. A second faction believes that vaccines, either MMR or mercury-containing thimerosal (or latestly Hep-B) have caused autism to increase. A third faction is the corporate medical establishment which promotes the idea that autism is a primarily genetic disorder and that the increase is not real but just the effect of increased awareness or diagnosis.

My involvement in autism research pre-dates all these factions and I partly disagree with all of them, but also partly agree with them all. I see some sound work from all of them and also some abysmally unsound work from all of them. I'm not in the business of taking sides. I judge publications on their reasoning and evidence rather than the partisanship of the conclusions or authors. In my experience as exclusively a theorist, I have to conclude that it is very rare for even biased parties to actually falsify their raw data; if they did so it would be impossible for my theories to so comfortably accommodate them as they do. Meanwhile, far too many people insist on following the false "logic" that "there's no smoke without fire". A crooked institution arranges a cover-up even if there is in reality not some catastrophe genuinely there to be covered up anyway.

My guess is that these factional differences will melt into history just as the silly confrontation of "Wagnerians" versus "Brahmsians" did.