Emily Willingham (Twitter, Google+, blog) is a science writer and compulsive biologist whose work has appeared at
Slate, Grist, Scientific American Guest Blog, and Double X Science, among others. She is science editor at the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to College Biology.
In May, the New York Times Magazine published a piece by Jennifer Kahn entitled, "Can you call a 9-year-old a psychopath
?" The online version generated a great deal of discussion, including 631 comments and a column from Amanda Marcotte at Slate
comparing psychopathy and autism. Marcotte's point seemed to be that if we accept autism as another variant of human neurology rather than as a moral failing, should we not also apply that perspective to the neurobiological condition we call "psychopathy"? Some autistic people to umbrage at the association with psychopathy, a touchy comparison in the autism community ...
