Writing About Autism and Science? 10 Things to Remember

Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com Word on the street — well, really on a blog from a researcher — is that the writer of the autism/inflammation New York Times op-ed, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, is working on an “annotated” version of the article that will “back up” his claims.” Some annotation would have been useful to begin with; as I noted in my analysis of that op-ed, in many instances, discerning the origin of his information was difficult or impossible. I understand that something that appears originally in print can’t have hyperlinks to appropriate references, but the writer certainly could have beefed up in-text citations (author names, journal publications), at least avoiding the criticism that the piece was unsatisfactorily sourced. Sourcing was not the only issue with that piece, however. Velasquez-Manoff has a book to sell, and that book, like many popular science books, has a narrative that may not necessarily stand up to…