We should choose the more charitable interpretation, not because there aren't idiots out there, but because doing so leads to more interesting discussion in the long run—and usually in the short run too.
The first question is "How does they manage to properly test this "link" with a distinct control group". Could you explain, please.
So, I prefer to read Simon Baron-Cohen.
If you have specific information about this or relevant research, by all means contribute it. But railing against idiocy in a generic way lowers the signal/noise ratio of the threads: if generic it must be predictable, and if predictable it can add no information. The Principle of Charity is so good for counteracting this that we may add it to the HN guidelines.
Intellectual charity doesn't require accepting anything false. It means that when there are several reasonable interpretations, you should pick the strongest. This goes against the default tendency we all have, to pick the weakest to then have the pleasure of overturning it. That pleasure is strong—so strong that one may begin seeing idiots for it—and it overpowers the pleasures of curiosity, which is what we're going for.