Cancer and Autism: Slow Down

The New York Times had a rather confusing story the other day about the PTEN gene, autism, and cancer. Unfortunately, it turned into a good example of how not to explain a subject like this, and it missed out (or waited too long) to explain a number of key concepts. Things like "one gene can be responsible a lot of different things in a human phenotype", and "genes can have a lot of different mutations, which can also do different things", and "autism's genetic signature is complex and not well worked out, not least because it's such a wide-ranging diagnosis", and (perhaps most importantly, "people with autism are not doomed to get cancer". Let me refer you to Emily Willingham at Forbes, who does a fine job of straightening things out here. I fear that what can happen at the Times (and other media outlets as well) is that when a reporter scrambles a science piece, there's no one else on the staff who's capable of noticing it. So it just runs as is.
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs