Quote:
Originally Posted by patfla06
I read that book and found it fascinating and scary at the same time.
I thought she stated that 1 out of every 100 was a sociopath.
Anyway the stats are way too high.  |
But those stats are what sells the book. No one would be interested if the author claimed that the incidence was maybe one in 100,000.
Same with autism, AKA the disease of the 90s. Remember those commercials that claimed that ONE IN SIX children in America had autism? Those people who live for such apocalyptic claims of course bought it hook, line and sinker. But nothing could be further from the truth, which was that maybe one in six American kids had one symptom of the dozens of symptoms of autism floating around out there, but for a firm diagnosis of autism you had to have at least three, and those symptoms had to be bad enough so that you could not function normally without outside help. Of course, that didn't appease the doomsayers, or the people in the public school system who turned autism into a cash cow in Minnesota (and I am assuming, other states as well). There may have been some changes in the criteria but I remember well the battles we fought over this.
Be wary of hyperbole.