The New York Times has pointed to an intriguing study apparently showing that some small percentage of people with autism ( 自闭症 ) can “outgrow” their symptoms. The story was oddly unsatisfying, claiming in one paragraph that the study, published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, will alter the way parents “think and talk about autism” but also cautioning against false hope. The writer seems only vaguely aware how this half-hearted message will set off a bomb in the world where Jenny McCarthy lives—that she will turn on that wicked smile and brandish this study to launch another 40 years of vicious debate over whether autism is caused by environmental factors, namely bacteria, and thus can be cured by brave and dedicated parents like her, or whether it's just a condition people are born with. Thankfully, science writer Emily Willingham has explained through the study in Forbes to show us what it really finds, which is not much that new and certainly nothing that will change our thinking about the progress of autism or make us believe in the McCarthy miracle cure. As Willingham points out, the people who seem to have “grown out” of their autism had higher cognitive functioning and milder symptoms in the first place, and “many of them had behavioral interventions in childhood”. One measure the researchers used to evaluate progress was “typically developing friends”, which people with autism sometimes have anyway. Seven of the 34 had some impairment in “non-verbal social interactions” which the researchers decided, somewhat randomly, was due to other factors such as anxiety or depression. Anyone who has read a single memoir by someone with Asperger's or known someone well with the condition can know by immediate feeling what's going on. At the moment, I happen to be reading Look Me in the Eye: My life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison. Over the course of his life, Robison learns to compensate for his social limitations. As a child he teaches himself to say appropriate things to children and not just force on them his own obsessive interests. As an he learns that blurting out the truth—“you look fatter”—is not always the right thing to do.