Autism, Education, and Engineering

I hadn't heard of either of these purported links to autism yet.

Apparently, incidents of autism are higher among people whose fathers are engineers than other professional careers. I don't find the paper terribly convincing because of the low sample size (sub 1k), but it is quite an anomaly (24% versus 17%).
http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2001_Wheelwright_BC.pdf

However, that study ties into another, more convincing, study in which parents with higher education levels had much higher rate of autistic children. Because this study controlled for age of parents and many other factors, and used a much larger sample size (9,900 autistic births out of 2.45 million), I find it much more useful. This research can alternatively be explained by parents with higher education more often taking steps to obtain a diagnosis of autism
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4071143/pdf/nihms580503.pdf

And yet other studies have shown that incidents of autism are higher among higher-educated individuals, controlling for parents' active involvement. "Compared to all 8-year-old children in the study areas, those with ASD were less likely to reside in census block groups classified as poverty areas, and more likely to be male and live in block groups with higher adult educational achievement and a higher MHI" (Median Household Income).
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011551

Fascinating, if not terribly useful.