> Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD.
Incredible! Sure, there could be a genetic component to what flourishes, or ever seeded, in one's microflora, but there's definitely some external complexities involved here.
> We note that due to the open-label nature of this initial trial, all of the assessments are subject to placebo effect, however the long-term improvements we observed here are promising.
It just says they behaved better, that's not recovering from severe autism at all... They didn't magically acquire language from a fecal transplant. Misleading
What happened here is simple: the autistic kids got better at masking in order to placate the researchers who were shoving poop up their butts. In the hope of making it stop.
Yeah the research is still preliminary but it's still pretty strong evidence that it's a research direction worth exploring.
what seems more plausible to me would be ~<<poop helped something, something made life easier, autistic life is less obvious and disruptive to non-autistics when life is easier>>
> We note that due to the open-label nature of this initial trial, all of the assessments are subject to placebo effect, however the long-term improvements we observed here are promising.
I think it's overly dismissive to summarise a drop in these behaviours as just "less obvious and disruptive to non-autistics". I can't imagine slamming your head into stuff is pleasant regardless of whether you have autism.
This is poor quality evidence of anything.