First off, autism is not a psychiatric illness so I'm not sure why psychiatrists like Fombonne and Rutter are getting involved. Also epidemiology cannot address the question of an affected subgroup of children as it does not have the capacity to so I'm not sure why it is being used as a tool to answer questions about vaccines affecting a susceptible subset of children. (Particularly whilst the obvious route of clinically examining the affected children is being neglected).
Also I find it dubious that these big shot experts in both psychiatry and epidemiology (neither of which relate to the autism question) work as expert witnesses for vaccine manufacturers and work in an institution that is mainly funded by corporate money and yet are used to conduct supposidely impartial studies the findings of which have potentially devastating consequences for those manufacturers and corporations.
In addition, this lot (and Goldacre who got us onto this subject) are all involved in the Institute of Psychiatrists and have links to Simon Wessely.
I forget that no doubt lots of people are not aware of the Institute of Psychiatrists' reputation.
The IoP of which Simon Wessely is a prominent member is known for misrepresenting organic illnesses (often of an environmental nature through say chemical poisoning) as psychiatric illnesses. In other words, this mainly corporate funded institution works at having physically sick people dubbed as mentally ill. People who probably got sick through exposure to chemicals sold by the corporations who fund the IoP. Is that sort of clear?
There is a group of psychiatrists commonly known as the 'Wessely Scool' who have done untold damage to ME/CFS patients by having their illness labeled in the UK as a mental disorder when the prevailing research into these conditions shows them to be organic in nature and related to exposure to chemicals and or viruses.
Because of the intentional mislabeling of these diseases sufferers are considered mentally ill, denied treatment that actually helps and given treatments that can worsen their conditions.
This is a long but very interesting brief for the House of Commons Select Health Committee which describes the Wessely School's activities.
Wessely is also a big player in Gulf War Syndrome denial and in presenting other environmental illnesses as psychiatric.
It is therefore of little surprise when reading about people who perpetuate misinformation about autism that one comes across links to the IoP, Wessely, Maudsley and so on.
It would appear that Goldacre moves in immensely powerful circles whilst presenting himself as an independent journalist.