A Cambridge study of the diaries of a teenage girl who killed herself has been dropped after criticism that it infantilised people with autism.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, intended to analyse the diaries of Caitlyn Scott-Lee, who died last year aged 16.
Scott-Lee, a year 11 boarding pupil at Wycombe Abbey School in Buckinghamshire, killed herself the day before she was due to have her first detention.
The research centre was hoping to study the teenager’s diaries to further understand why people with autism are at higher risk of killing themselves. The diaries had been loaned to the centre by Scott-Lee’s family.
