evidence: Anti-vaccine advocates have, at least since the early 2000s, used the Amish — a group of insular individuals descended from Swiss Anabaptist immigrants who shun modern technology — as a piece of evidence that links autism to vaccines. [...] The argument that near non-existent rates of autism amongst the Amish are related to a failure to vaccinate rests on two assumptions: 1) that the Amish do not vaccinate their children, and 2) that the Amish do not get autism. Both assumptions are false. [...] Counter to the claims that the Amish do not vaccinate and do not get autism are the facts that a majority of Amish people vaccinate their children and that Amish people are, in fact, diagnosed with autism. Though it is true that their vaccination rates are lower, and that — at least according to preliminary studies — their rates of autism occurrence are also lower, this observation in no way validates the idea — popularized by a fraudulent, retracted study by a doctor with a financial interest in promoting a different vaccine — that vaccines cause autism.