u/moon_and_back_95

“The superstar’s third album features even sharper storytelling, even more visceral emotions, and Robert Smith.” - Julyssa Lopez

I’ve been struggling for months, almost feeling like I just didn’t want to exist.

But today, somehow, I woke up positive and happy. I went to my kitchen to have breakfast and thought “wow, I can’t believe how lucky I am to have a fridge and freezer that can store the food I like, I have a dishwasher that can wash my dishes for me, and I have a washing machine that washes my clothes! Just a few decades ago they didn’t have these things, I would have had to manage all of this on my own!”

I just feel so grateful for the things I have. I haven’t felt like this for months, maybe years. It’s such a beautiful feeling. I don’t know how long it will last, I don’t know why it happened, but I’m just going to enjoy it and celebrate it as much as I can 🥹

I’ve been concerned about this for a while as I often read posts and comments with this issue in this sub, so I decided so make a post about it.

Let me preface that I think it’s great that we want to inform and support each other, but I often see people saying “studies show that…” without citing which studies or letting us know if they checked that those studies were actually reputable.

There is so much crap even in the academic world and not all published studies can be trusted. Some important things to check when reviewing studies:

- is the study from a reputable journal? One useful thing to check is the “impact factor” of the journal
- has it been peer-reviewed?
- is the methodology chosen for the study clear? How big was the sample size? Was the sample size diverse enough?
- is the study subject to bias? Any conflict of interest that involved the authors, the university/agency or the journal?

I say this because for many users this sub is an important source of knowledge, since there is so much misinformation about autism and neurodivergence especially for women, and we often trust each other a lot. So I think it’s important that when we share evidence in posts and comments, that we try our best to check our sources and make sure we’re not accidentally contributing to the misinformation 🙏