Regret Is Not Retraction: Simon Baron-Cohen’s non-apology, and the £26m question we should be asking

Dr Chloe Farahar (they/she) | Aucademy CIC©

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Regret Is Not Retraction: Simon Baron-Cohen’s non-apology, and the £26m question we should be asking

On 5 July 2026, the Guardian ran an exclusive: the man who gave the world the “extreme male brain” theory of “autism”* now regrets the phrase. Simon Baron-Cohen told the paper that terms like “male brain” and “female brain” are no longer useful, that they invite simplistic headlines, and – importantly – that it is a myth Autistic people lack empathy (Devlin, 2026).

[*autism is in quotation marks as it refers to the abstract concept used to describe “people with autism spectrum disorder”. I reject this term in favour of talking about us as Autistic people – whole Autistic humans]

Read quickly, it looks like a reckoning. Read carefully, it is nothing of the sort.

Because in the same breath, he insisted the underlying science had “stood the test of time” (Devlin, 2026). And he said all of this to the Guardian before the announcement of a £26m gift to Cambridge from the philanthropist Lisa Yang – money that will fund a new centre he will direct, alongside a clinical “autism” centre in a future Cambridge children’s hospital.

This is not an apology. It is a rebrand. And the timing tells us why.

What he conceded – and what he kept

Let us be precise about what has actually changed, because the distinction is everything.

What he gave up is a phrase. “Extreme male brain” was always indefensible – a piece of neurosexism dressed as neuroscience – and abandoning the label costs him nothing now that it has done its work. What he kept is the theory: the empathising–systemising model, and the claim that the science beneath it is sound.

And notice what the empathy concession really is. For two decades, the “empathy deficit” story – built on his own “theory of mind” work – told the world that Autistic people cannot read, or feel for, other minds. Now he tells us that was a myth. A myth that many of us spent those same two decades trying to correct, whilst drowning in other people’s feelings. That is not humility. That is a man conceding a point the community forced on him, and taking the credit for the correction.

The theories, one by one

Here is the harder truth the interview does not sit with: his theories have not “stood the test of time.” One by one, they have buckled – and, tellingly, several were dismantled by Autistic scholars he spent a career talking over.

Take “mindblindness” and the claim that Autistic people lack a “theory of mind.” Damian Milton reframed this entirely with the double empathy problem: the breakdown between Autistic and non-Autistic people is mutual – a two-way failure of understanding, not a defect that sits inside us (Milton, 2012; Milton, Gurbuz, & López, 2022). The evidence has followed. Non-Autistic people misjudge us within seconds and choose not to interact (Sasson et al., 2017); Autistic-to-Autistic communication, meanwhile, can flow perfectly well (Mitchell, Sheppard, & Cassidy, 2021). The “blindness,” it turns out, was never only ours.

Take the “empathy deficit.” A now-substantial body of work shows that the emotional differences once pinned on “autism” are better explained by alexithymia – a difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions – which often co-occurs with being Autistic but is not being Autistic itself (Bird & Cook, 2013). Control for alexithymia, and the supposed “Autistic empathy deficit” simply disappears (Cook, Brewer, Shah, & Bird, 2013; Bird et al., 2010). Baron-Cohen now calls the deficit a myth. The science that dismantled it was not his.

Take the “extreme male brain” itself. Even on its own terms – a population-level average dressed up as an individual truth – it fuelled a generation of missed, dismissed, and misdiagnosed Autistic women, girls, non-binary and trans people, because clinicians were trained to look for a “male” profile (and, let us be honest, plenty of Autistic men who did not fit it either). A theory that hides half a community from diagnosis is not a neutral scientific curiosity. It is a harm measured in lost years.

And the “prenatal sex steroid” theory – the foetal-testosterone claim on which his more recent honours rest – remains contested and poorly replicated, however decorated.

Am I claiming every strand is settled and dead? No – and I will not overstate it, because his defenders will pounce on any exaggeration. Some empathising–systemising findings do replicate on his own very large datasets (Greenberg et al., 2018). But what those self-report questionnaires actually measure, and the deficit story stacked on top of them, are precisely what has not held. The direction of travel is unmistakable – and in conceding the label and the empathy myth, Baron-Cohen is quietly walking it whilst insisting he is not.

Why now? Follow the aims, not the apology

Here I want to be careful, and honest, about the difference between what we know and what we suspect.

We have been here before. In 2021, Baron-Cohen’s Spectrum 10K set out to collect the DNA of 10,000 Autistic people. The Autistic community organised – I was part of that organising – under the banner Boycott Spectrum 10K and the slogan “Nothing about us, without us.” And we did the one thing the press releases never invite: we read the actual grant. Its stated aims were not the warm language of “wellbeing” on the website. In the funder’s own words, the study set out to identify genetic variants that “contribute to the development of “autism”,” to “investigate if there are any genetically-defined subgroups of people with “autism”,” and to “improve on existing methods for diagnosing “autism”” (Aucademy, 2021). Subtyping. Earlier diagnosis. That is what the money was for. After a two-year fight, the project was dropped (Gray-Hammond, 2025; Devlin, 2026).

So, forgive me if I do not applaud a regret delivered on the doorstep of a £26m centre – one whose stated priorities are, once again, earlier diagnosis and a clinical arm inside a children’s hospital.

Let me be clear about the limits of what I can prove. The Guardian piece does not say the new Yang centre is a genetics or subtyping project, and I will not tell you that it is. What I can tell you is that the last time this researcher received a major grant, the friendly public framing and the actual aims were two different documents – and the community only found the gap by reading the paperwork, not the press.

So the questions write themselves. What, precisely, are the Lisa Yang Centre’s research aims – in the funding agreement, not the interview? Who governs them? Are Autistic people partners and decision-makers in setting those priorities, with the power to say no – or are we, once again, to be “consulted” after the cheque has cleared? What happens to any data collected? And what does “earlier diagnosis” of children mean to someone who has always returned to attempting to subcategorise us?

Follow the aims, not the apology.

The harm was never abstract

We must not let a softer new tone quietly erase what the old theories did.

The empathy myth did not stay in a journal. It was baked into diagnostic criteria, school reports, relationship counselling, and the private self-image of every late-discovered Autistic person who spent decades believing they were cold, broken, or unlovable. It taught non-Autistic people that we were the ones who could not connect – and then blamed us for the disconnection. This is not abstract damage: it is exactly the isolation, self-blame, and minority stress that erode Autistic wellbeing (Botha & Frost, 2020; Farahar, 2022). Meanwhile, “autism” research poured its funding into causes, genes, and mechanisms, and starved the things our community actually asks for – support, services, and a decent quality of life.

What accountability would actually look like

I am, as ever, more interested in repair than in point-scoring. So, what would a genuine reckoning look like – not a rebrand, but accountability?

It would mean retracting the theory, not merely the terminology – stating publicly that the deficit models were wrong, and why. It would mean putting £26m where the community’s priorities actually are: the healthcare, the mental health support, and the premature-mortality crisis Autistic people have been naming for years. (And yes – if his own team’s cardiovascular findings hold up to peer review, that is precisely the kind of work worth funding: led by us, not merely conducted about us.) It would mean lived experts as researchers, co-researchers, partners and decision-makers, with the power to shape and to veto, from the first line of the grant. And it would mean transparency: the aims, the governance, and the data pathways, published where we can read them.

We are still here

Every major theory this man built has been challenged, reframed, or quietly abandoned – much of it by the very Autistic people his theories rendered voiceless. He has been knighted, medalled, and prized for that body of work, and now, as the honours and the millions arrive, he tells us the phrasing was “unfortunate”.

Regret is not retraction. A softer sentence is not a safer science. And an apology delivered alongside a £26m grant is not an apology – it is a strategy.

We read the aims last time. We will read them again.

#BoycottSBC · #BoycottSpectrum10K · Nothing about us, without us.

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References

Aucademy. (2021, September 3). Boycott Spectrum 10K – please sign. https://aucademy.co.uk/2021/09/03/boycott-spectrum-10k-please-sign/

Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). Mixed emotions: The contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of “autism”. Translational Psychiatry, 3(7), e285. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2013.61

Bird, G., Silani, G., Brindley, R., White, S., Frith, U., & Singer, T. (2010). Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not “autism”. Brain, 133(5), 1515–1525. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awq060

Botha, M., & Frost, D. M. (2020). Extending the minority stress model to understand mental health problems experienced by the Autistic population. Society and Mental Health, 10(1), 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318804297

Cook, R., Brewer, R., Shah, P., & Bird, G. (2013). Alexithymia, not “autism”, predicts poor recognition of emotional facial expressions. Psychological Science, 24(5), 723–732. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463582

Devlin, H. (2026, July 5). Pioneer of ‘extreme male brain’ theory of “autism” now says phrase unhelpful. The Guardian.

Farahar, C. (2022). Chapter Nineteen – Autistic identity, culture, community, and space for wellbeing. In D. Milton, & S. Ryan (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Autism Studies (1st ed.). Routledge.

Gray-Hammond, D. (2025, January 31). Spectrum 10K closed: The power of community organising. Emergent Divergence.

Greenberg, D. M., Warrier, V., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2018). Testing the empathizing–systemizing theory of sex differences and the extreme male brain theory of “autism” in half a million people. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(48), 12152–12157. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811032115

Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of “autism”: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Milton, D., Gurbuz, E., & López, B. (2022). The ‘double empathy problem’: Ten years on. “autism”, 26(8), 1901–1903. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221129123

Mitchell, P., Sheppard, E., & Cassidy, S. (2021). “autism” and the double empathy problem: Implications for development and mental health. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 39(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12350

Sasson, N. J., Faso, D. J., Nugent, J., Lovell, S., Kennedy, D. P., & Grossman, R. B. (2017). Neurotypical peers are less willing to interact with those with “autism” based on thin slice judgments. Scientific Reports, 7, 40700. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700

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Did Simon Baron-Cohen really say sorry?  –  An Easy Read blog

Written by Dr Chloe Farahar

What has happened?

🔬 Simon Baron-Cohen is a scientist. He has studied autism for a long time.

💬 He has just said sorry for one of his phrases. The phrase was “extreme male brain”.

But saying sorry for one phrase is not the same as saying his ideas were wrong.

What did he say about empathy?

❤️ He said it is a myth that Autistic people have no empathy.

Empathy means caring about how other people feel. Autistic people do care about other people.

Did he say his ideas were wrong?

⚠️ No. He still says his science is right.

But many of his ideas have been shown to be wrong.

How have his ideas caused harm?

💔 For many years, his ideas told people that Autistic people do not understand or care about others.

This hurt many Autistic people. Some felt broken or unloved.

Many women and girls were not told they are Autistic, because people looked for the wrong things.

What is the truth?

🤝 Autistic and non-autistic people can find each other hard to understand. This goes both ways.

Autistic people often understand each other very well.

This idea is called the double empathy problem. An Autistic scholar, Damian Milton, first explained it.

Why is he saying this now?

💰 At the same time, he is getting a lot of money. It is £26 million.

He will be the boss of a new autism centre. It will also work with Autistic children in a new hospital.

Has this happened before?

🧬 Yes. A few years ago he got big money for a study called Spectrum 10K.

He wanted to collect the DNA of 10,000 Autistic children.

DNA is tiny information inside our bodies. It helps make us who we are.

The study wanted to find “types” of autism. It also wanted to find out earlier which children are Autistic.

What did Autistic people do?

🛑 Many Autistic people were worried. We were scared the DNA could be used to stop Autistic people being born.

We started a campaign called Boycott Spectrum 10K. We worked together, and the study was stopped.

What are we asking now?

❓What is the new money really for?

Who is in charge? Are Autistic people helping to make the choices?

What will happen to any information they collect?

What would make things better?

✅ Say the old ideas were wrong.

Spend the money on what Autistic people need, like good health care and support.

Let Autistic people lead and make the decisions.

Be open and honest about the plans.

What is the main message?

👀 Saying sorry for a phrase is not the same as saying the ideas were wrong.

We will keep watching.

Nothing about us, without us.

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