Debunking Neanderthal Nonsense: Part I

I've wanted to do this series for a while, though I'm not sure how many posts about it I'll end up writing.

Part I: "Check One" and the Fallacy of Racial Classification

If you've spent any time on Wrong Planet, or a few other message boards for autistics, then you've probably heard of "The Neanderthal Theory of Autism." (This will henceforth be referred to as the Neanderthal hypothesis, however, given that it does not meet the scientific criteria for a theory. I'm not sure I should even refer to it as a hypothesis, as it is not testable, but it seems the best alternative.) In short, the Neanderthal hypothesis holds that the continued existence of autism as a phenotype can be best explained by looking to our evolutionary past, specifically the Neanderthals. According to this hypothesis, we autistics are the descendents of Neanderthals, who had autistic-like traits which enabled them to survive (for a time) in particular environmental conditions. The author of this theory claims that this proves that autistics--or rather, those he classifies as "HFA" or "aspie"--have special talents and skills to offer. While I certainly agree that autistics have valuable abilities, I would question the assertion that this is only true for certain kinds of autistics, and that it is necessary to invoke an imagined evolutionary past in order to "explain" this fact.

What is equally disturbing about this hypothesis is the ways in which it explicitly relies upon theories of racial supremacy. According to this, autism is more common among certain racial groups (whites, Asians), and these groups also have a higher intelligence on average. These outrageous claims put the Neanderthal hypothesis in the same category of a long line of racist pseudo-science attempting to "prove" the existence of racial hierarchies. For this reason alone, I find it incredibly noxious when white autistics propagate this theory, demonstrating little to no understanding of the pertinent social issues.

The author of this theory would claim that it's supported by his data, derived from the Aspie-quiz. I would question the validity of his data, in certain key ways.

Now, I happen to think that the Aspie-quiz (while unfortunately named to be exclusive to many autistics) has numerous virtues. I think it's a better, more comprehensive self-assessment for autism than Simon Baron-Cohen's AQ test. For certain purposes, the Aspie-quiz can be quite useful. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in self-discovery.

But. There are problems with using the Aspie-quiz data to infer generalizations about larger populations--autistics as a whole, certain ethnic groups, etc. One problem is that one person can take the quiz many times and thus skew the data. I know that some iterations of the quiz have controlled for that by asking if the person has taken the quiz before, but the current version has no such control. And this is quite relevant because autistic people like to repeat things. I myself have taken this quiz at least twenty times, and that's a conservative estimate. So, the data is screwy in that way. And, of course, there's also the fact that the data is not collected by random sample, but rather self-referral to the quiz.

There's also another huge, fundamental problem with this method of data collection. The problem begins on the first page of the quiz: Participants are asked to identify their "Recent, main ancestry." And while many options are provided--pretty much the entire range of places where humans have lived, with a great deal of country-based specificity--that isn't terribly useful in light of this one, major problem. Participants can only pick one option.

This is an outdated way of looking at ethnicity. During the past few decades, multiracial activist organizations have done much to bring this problem to public attention. For many people, "picking one" ethnic classification category means picking one side of their family or another. The U.S. census has attempted to rectify this problem by allowing people to check more than one box. Many other forms also allow this system. Other forms simply allow people to check "Multiracial/Other," which makes me roll my eyes a bit. (How does it feel to be "Other"?) But the point is, the Aspie-quiz doesn't acknowledge the possibility of multi-ethnic identity. Participants are forced to "check one."

Which, in the context of the Aspie-quiz, poses a problem even for those of us who don't seem to be multi-ethnic at first glance. How many people--particularly in the United States, but also elsewhere--can narrow their ancestry down to a single country, or even a single region such as "Western Europe"? Not many, I would say. On the surface, my own ethnic identity seems fairly straightforward: I'm an American Jew. But, under the constraints of the Aspie-quiz, I could check at least four different countries in three different general regions. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I have checked all four different countries in that quiz at some point or another. How many others are like me, having ancestors who immigrated from different countries? How many others can recount an even more diverse heritage? I'm guessing a lot.

Moreover, it is quite simply a fact that no one can know his or her full ethnic background beyond a shadow of a doubt. Interethnic sexual relations are nothing new, nor is long-distance migration, though social and historical factors may have made these phenomena more prominent and accelerated their growth. It's quite possible--likely, even--that any one person's ethnic background isn't quite as "European" or "Asian" as they might think.

That brings us to another point, which is that the Aspie-quiz's ethnic categories are, by and large, a construction of the current political world order. A century ago, Jews and Italians were not considered white. A thousand years ago, different groups from Western Europe--even those who lived within the same modern-day nation state--did not consider themselves to be part of one "race." When we're considering the current-day relation to prehistoric times, these facts are not trivial. I'd also note that, as extensive as the Aspie-quiz is in its problematic ethnic classification system, there are still yet more classifications which could be made. Racial categories are not by any means fixed and immutable.

So how can we trust anything the Neanderthal hypothesis has to say about race, when its own data comes from such a flawed model of ethnic identification?