[dragonwriter]

> The authors reason that children are likely to watch more television if they live in an area that gets more precipitation

Growing up in part of the California Central Valley where it is intolerably hot outside for a large portion of the year and has near-desert levels of precipitation, and then moving to the Bay Area which has more precipitation and less intolerable heat, I found the reverse to be the case, which given where the research was conducted...

> If that is the case, then a finding that areas with higher levels of precipitation have higher autism rates would be strongly suggestive of a role for television watching as an autism trigger,

“Strongly suggestive” ludicrously overstates the case.

I mean, there's a lot of things more strongly associated with precipitation than television watching.