Here’s a recipe for getting a lot of media attention for your research (that is, if you’re not involved in stem cell/cloning work):

1. Work on an increasingly common disease whose cause remains a very controversial mystery

2. Find a genetic link that accounts for some of the cases, even if it’s just one percent of those cases

3. Collaborate with lots of people (scientists, clinicians and affected families) to collect, share, and analyze data from hundreds to thousands of patients

4. Get your work published in the New England Journal of Medicine

Newspapers and magazines (Boston Globe, NY Times, AP, Business Week, and more) are reporting the NEJM paper released yesterday describing the discovery of mutations in a section of chromosome 16 that appear to increase the risk of autism by 10 to 100 times and account for about 1 percent of cases. The senior author, Mark Daly of MGH and the Broad Institute, is part of the Autism Consortium, which is based in Boston and brings together 14 local institutions and dozens of PIs. They worked with colleagues across the US and in Iceland with Decode Genetics to analyze genotype data from 751 families affected by autism and from more than 800 people with autism.

Not to sound too cynical or anything with my ‘recipe’ and I’m certainly not implying that the researchers went out of their way to get publicity for their important work. (These articles quote scientists not involved in the project as saying how important this finding is.) But it goes to show just how hungry the public is for news about the causes of mysterious diseases, especially ones that affects children.

Glad to see that at least some of these articles have been responsible to stress that this is a result in basic science and isn’t going to lead right away to some kind of diagnostic test.