evidence: Precisely what those other factors are is still unknown, but researchers are at least clear on one fact: Autism has nothing to do with vaccines. "We know for sure, for so many years now, that vaccines don’t cause autism," said Santhosh Girirajan, an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders and wasn't involved in the new study. [...] "A reduction in disparities has led to increases in autism [rates], but that doesn't mean that the disparities have disappeared," said an author of the new study, Josephine Shenouda, an epidemiologist at Rutgers.