Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has gone from 1:150 to 1:68 over about 10 years, and another study from last year (1) had the rate at 1:50. Saying that an increase this dramatic is based on changing diagnostic criteria and awareness seems disingenuous, and intended not to alarm the public. 1 http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/April-2013/CDC-Reports...
The sort of academics I'm talking about don't think about whether or not they'll alarm the public. They don't think of the public as their audience. Thier audience is other academics, and all that they care about is making conservative conclusions based on data.
And the people who deliver data (the CDC in this case) clearly are highly concerned about alarming the public. The single word "However" in the bullet point here (http://www.cdc.gov/media/DPK/2014/dpk-autism.html) is a fairly obvious indicator of the CDC's agenda not to cause concern even with these high numbers, as it infers that the problem isn't as bad as it used to be (because IQs are higher). That the CDC chose to frame the data in this way is troubling.