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r/skeptic's "I was practicing GraphPad and I think I may have discovered the 'real' cause of autism..."

NOTE: I'm not entirely certain about the origin of this graph, so I apologize if my citation isn't correct. The earliest version I could find was on imgur from user r/skeptic (yes, associated with the Skeptic subreddit).

from http://imgur.com/1WZ6h


I think the illustration above  is a good way of a) demonstrating that correlation does not equal causation and b) sticking it to anti-vaxers who use a lot of correlational data (see below) to back up their theories about why rates of Autism have been increasing.

From safeminds.org

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  1. UnknownNovember 1, 2013 at 4:15 PM

    Copper sulfate and rotenone are two of the primary organic pesticides used. Copper poisoning combined with zinc deficiency has been found to be a biomarker for autism. http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13547500902783747 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-010-8766-2
    Rotenone causes Parkinson's like symptoms in rats.
    http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/34/10756.short
    The one thing that throws off the theory is the lack of correlation between autism and race/SES. Which I am pretty sure organic produce is mostly consumed by the higher SES white group at a much higher rate.

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