In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, where he also runs the Autism Research Centre. Simon has been working in the field of autism for approaching 40 years and is one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject.

Since the mid-1980s, the research he’s led and undertaken has led him to advance several different, complementary theories of the condition including: the mind-blindness theory, the prenatal sex steroid theory, and the empathising-systemising theory of autism and typical sex differences.

Some corners of autism research have a somewhat shady and disreputable reputation for their misuse of data; for drawing conclusions about the general population from tiny sample sizes that the data could not warrant. Indeed, it was in the wake of the MMR scandal that the charity Sense About Science was founded in the early 2000s – to encourage researchers to present their findings responsibly and the media to report them responsibly – and Sense About Science’s director, Tracey Brown, was a recent guest on Data Malarkey.

By contrast with the shady stuff, Simon’s research has been a shining light of empiricism and evidence-based, data-driven truth, with sample sizes sometimes in the tens or hundreds of thousands. His 2018, empathising-systemising study famously collected data from 36,000 autistic people and 600,000 non-autistic people.

Described by the medical journal The Lancet as “a man with extraordinary knowledge … his passionate advocacy for a more tolerant, diverse society, where difference is respected and cultivated, reveals a very human side to his science” it is our honour to welcome Simon to Data Malarkey. A very fitting, very high-profile end to Season Five, a season bookended by two great Cambridge minds, as we started with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter.

To secure Simon as a guest on Data Malarkey, I’m delighted to say I had to drop my son Max’s name. At the time of recording, Max had recently hosted Simon at an excellent event run by the recently-reborn Cambridge Psychology Society, of which Max is now President. At the university, he is studying Psychological & Behavioural Sciences. #proudfather

EXTERNAL LINKS

Profile of Simon on The Lancet – Psychiatry site https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(15)00461-7/fulltext

The Autism Research Centre https://www.autismresearchcentre.com

The extraordinary output of 750+ articles from the Autism Research Centre on PubMed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=simon+baron-cohen&sort=date

Auticon, the social enterprise on a mission to improve the employment prospects of neurodivergent people, whose board Simon advises https://auticon.com/uk/

To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.