yep, that's it. I'm a little nervous about dissing a famous researcher, but I did read the paper and it didn't seem right. It was definitely phrased as if the correlation between autism and the results of various questionnaires vindicated modeling autism as a empathizing-systematizing spectrum. I'm not saying I disagree with that model personally (how would I know?) but that it's not good enough justification to do it that way.

Of course, to be fair to Baron-Cohen, I've read one paper of his, not his entire body of work; if he fills in the gap elsewhere, more power to him. In that case, my example of "bad research" would be fictional (but still, I believe, bad.)