"The scientists were surprised by their finding, calling it 'far from conclusive.' Because their research was not designed to focus on autism, they recommend further study of larger numbers of children to see whether the link can be confirmed."

That's the money quote in the interesting submitted article.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

The finding is quite intriguing, and I wonder how it will filter through the varied opinion-makers in the autism-issues blogosphere.

After edit: You're welcome for the link to Peter Norvig's article. As regular readers here know, it is one of my favorite links to post in comments here on HN. My further comment on the submitted article in this thread is that its second page refers to an increase in autism in California. Statements that autism has increased in recent decades are controversial,

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4726

http://www.asatonline.org/about_autism/ontherise.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/features/counting-autism.html

because diagnostic criteria have changed over the same period, so how much real increase in the actual condition there has been may be much less than the increase in recorded diagnoses.