Weird Psychological Science

The New Jersey Times-Gazette reports a Penn State study which found the vast increase in autism cases can be explained by reclassification of persons who would have, in earlier times, been labeled "challenged," "intellectually disabled," or experiencing "developmental language disorder." Here is the money quote:

In this latest study at Penn by Santosh Girirajan and his colleagues, data pertaining to special education enrollment for 6.2 million children were evaluated. While the numbers were nearly stable for 11 years, diagnostic categories did shift around with increase in autism diagnoses nearly balancing the decrease in number of students categorized under ‘intellectually disabled’.

Presumably much of this occurs because parents would rather hear their children are "autistic" than "mentally retarded." It carries less stigma, one supposes, but it's very sad whatever the label. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.