An Initial Aetiology of Autism: From Early Psychological Theories to the Theory of Correlation with Vaccines

1. The initial aetiology 2. The vaccination correlation fraud 3. An exponential growth of interest 5. Errors, bias and noise In direct correlation with the framework of early autism introduced and described in the second chapter, this chapter introduces the earliest aetiologies that, chronologically, go all the way back to the vaccine correlation theory. The topic of the exponential increase in interest and scientific research on autism over the last 30 years will also be introduced here. The second part of this chapter introduces a topic that is very relevant across the following chapters, namely the topic of bias, error and ‘noise’ in scientific research. This is an opportunity to provide the tools for understanding some of the critical analyses that will be proposed regarding statistical data, incidence analyses and epidemiological research. But it is also an opportunity to contextualise, specify and introduce topics that are typically framed in behavioural and economic choice psychology, and that instead have much to say about any human activity, including scientific research and analysis.