Rather, they are trying to focus attention on cognitive faculties that go beyond intelligence - what they describe as the essential tools of rational thinking.
Autistic people can have special skills but they also tend to suffer from anxiety, obsessive behaviour and other problems that far outweigh any advantages.
A study in Sweden and the United States found that people using a cell phone before bedtime take longer to get into deep sleep and spend less time in the deepest part of sleep.
But the research raises profound ethical questions, because human embryos - typically conceived in vitro - are destroyed so that stem cells may be harvested.