The biggest issue with a lot of autism research is in how they measure the symptoms of autism. Autistics will often "melt down" or engage in other stereotypical behaviors when the environmental stressors are more severe than what they can deal with through behavior that appears "normal". The more severe the stressors, the more severe and frequent the behavioral deviations.

In short, most scientific approaches will often conflate reducing autism with helping people handle their autism better. It's a pretty chronic problem for understanding the disease, but much less impactful for generating practical treatments. Mental healthcare in general doesn't care much whether it reduces the severity of neurodivergence or the distress and socially problematic behavior caused by neurodivergence.