Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Causes of autism" in English language version.
Although autism spectrum disorder has not been proven to exist either as a set of meaningful subgroups, or as the expression of a unifying deficit or causal pattern, nonetheless, autism appears to have been unified as a real entity in public opinion... Some researchers have argued that, over time, autism has been transformed from a hypothesis to an assumed reality. This transformation is called reification. Reification is the conversion of a theorized entity into something assumed and believed to be real... the intense public discussion of autism, the long history of autism in the diagnostic manuals of the American Psychiatric Association, and the long history of autism research are in full view, and they all have made autism seem more concrete and less hypothetical.