6. This study was approved by the Lausanne University Hospital Ethics Committee

Yet in the introduction to the paper, the authors acknowledge that ‘Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) [sic] often report that looking in the eyes of others is uncomfortable for them, that it is terribly stressful, or even that “it burns”’

It’s interesting that their citation for this is a low-effort listicle of sixteen quotes from Autistic people on Facebook (https://themighty.com/topic/autism-spectrum-disorder/why-eye-contact-can-be-difficult-for-people-with-autism/), suggesting to me that they don‘t take our suffering seriously

If they (and the ethics committee) really believed Autistic people’s accounts of the discomfort, stress and even physical pain associated with eye contact, would they really have encouraged Autistic participants to look lots of people in the eye??

Maybe they would: they say in the Discussion section that ‘our direct comparison of the same dynamic facial expression seen freely or with a fixation cross is the most direct evidence of the mechanisms by which direct eye-contact may be experienced as stressful in autism’

#EthicsInAutismResearch #ableism #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #ActuallyAutistic #EyeContact