text_1: Brain scans may someday detect autism
text_2: The photo that ran with this story appeared straight out of a dystopian fantasy: a mother holding her infant, her shoulder draped in a loose, shawl-like lattice of wires connected to a swarm of electrodes attached to her baby’s head. Is this the future? Fortunately for readers, this story  did a better job than HealthDay in making better use of independent experts and didn’t allowing the lead author to get away with one of the more over-the-top statements that was quoted in the HealthDay story. But it did fail to explain the harms that may be associated with widespread use of scans or with false positives, the costs, and the alternatives to this type of screening. . Autism spectrum disorders are increasingly being diagnosed, yet the causes remain elusive and the treatments are far from a cure for most kids. Parents are hungry for solutions, as can be seen in the passionate comments below this article. What we do know is that early detection appears to be important because early intervention has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of the disorder. That’s why it is crucial for stories to carefully sort through the evidence to weed out the blips along the way from the true breakthroughs.