"Neuroscience Fiction" by Gary Marcus for The New Yorker's blog succinctly expresses the sad truth about neuroscience: it is in its infancy, and claims that we are the the verge of understanding or treating complex neurological differences like autism have been inflated to the point of dishonesty:
The real problem with neuroscience today isn’t with the science—though plenty of methodological challenges still remain—it’s with the expectations. The brain is an incredibly complex ensemble, with billions of neurons coming into—and out of—play at any given moment. There will eventually be neuroscientific explanations for much of what we do; but those explanations will turn out to be incredibly complicated. For now, our ability to understand how all those parts relate is quite limited, sort of like trying to understand the political dynamics of Ohio from an airplane window above Cleveland.
It's not that significant research is not being done or that scientists are not making important discoveries. They are. But they are rarely honest with the general public about just how much there still is to learn before we are even going to able to able to make a legitimate hypothesis about a question like "how does autism work?"
