Maybe it’s me — but rarely, when researching vaccines and their effects, do I consult comedians — or former Playboy centerfolds, for that matter. I gotta say, I do find it frustrating sometimes that the M (forget the MS part) gives so much face time to “gee, I’m not a scientist, but I spelled it on TV one time” non-experts on important subjects.

I know there are more than a few sciencegeek lizards around here — while we’re VAGUELY on the vaccination topic, a while back I saw the briefest glimpse of an autism study that focused not on vaccines, but TV and the early development of the visual cortex. As I recall, the scientists took a very cautious view, saying that there’s enough data to at least examine the idea, but not enough to draw substantial conclusions: the bottom line is that they have observed possible links between autism and being plopped in front of a rapidly-refreshing electronic screen for extended periods before age 2, the germ of the idea being that exposure to brightly moving images with modern screen refresh rates might well interfere with how a child learns to process visual data in the critical first couple of years. (Content was not relevant, the process of converting light to comprehensible concepts was the thrust.) To my non-medically-trained brain, this seems like a promising line of research. But I’ve seen or heard little to nothing in ANY media since. Has anybody else seen anything about this study?