Personally, I think we have a lot of foundational research to do since I'm not convinced that what we call autism isn't like 3 or 4 diseases/disorders in a trench coat.
I've spent much time mulling this point and have concluded I don't give a damn. If people are constantly running into the problem of any specific definition of "Autism" not encompassing the entire population, the problem isn't me, the problem is that the word "Autism" itself is overloaded. I'm not going to spend even 1 second doing anything but trying to destigmatise autism and talk about autistics being strong and capable, I literally don't care if that makes people mad, they can come up with a new word to describe these more impaired autistics if they don't feel I'm representing their interests. I'm not going to sabotage my own interests out of some misguided sense of morality.
We used to distinguish between Aspergers and Autism, people can go back to a system like that if it makes them happy.
As to the cause issue, yes, many potential causes, classification bins are useful when a cause has a shared dynamic since the symptom groups are similar.
Just like 'cancer', they're all different.
I know very few excellent (as in near top of the field) researchers who aren't autistic or ADHD or neurodivergent in some kind of a way, I have no idea where you're getting this idea from. It's one of the few fields that we excel at far and above other people (bias-variance tradeoff, as per an earlier comment of mine).
You're probably overstating this - only about 20% of (diagnosed) autistic adults have jobs [1, 2], and a huge percentage of those who are, work part-time. Around 30% of autistic people are "minimally verbal" (speak 30 or fewer words) [3], and will need support for life. More than half overall will never live a normal life.
Obv this doesn't count undiaignosed cases, but people with autism who can live an independent life, keep relationships and hold down a job are in the minority, and an awful lot of the discourse around autism just ignores this outright.
[1] https://i-am-autism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/autism...
[2] https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/new-data-on-the-au...
The struggles of autism are significant, and while people on the spectrum make excellent researchers/engineers and such, many absolutely struggle in their personal life.
Being rather autistic myself, I understand this struggle very, very well. This is a struggle of many of my autistic friends too, unfortunately, though most have income sources in a non-normal manner that is better suited to their autism.
There is a lot of nuance go this issue for sure, and I appreciate your points here.