Dame Uta first expressed her views in an interview with the Times Educational Supplement in March. The NAS reacted to it in strong terms.

It wrote a blog post about "false narratives and outdated ideas", "misinformation" and "false claims".

Dame Uta says it's "just wrong" to dismiss her like this.

The NAS says anyone with an autism diagnosis will have been assessed against strict criteria and "have lifelong differences in communication, behaviours and focused interests compared to non-autistic people".

Dr Sue Smith, the NAS's head of clinical services, says: "We've got a group of people with a genuine need. We're having this weird debate about what they should be called."

She says this isn't just an academic row but has real implications for autistic people: "Historically a lot of people who weren't properly identified as autistic were given other really unhelpful labels", such as borderline personality disorder or bipolar.

She worries that re-labelling some autistic people could lead to them losing support.

Dr Monique Botha, an associate professor of psychology at Durham University, criticised Dame Uta's opinion using swear words.

Botha is autistic and stands by her reaction: "A lot of people were understandably upset and angry… I still am.

"Researchers have a duty to be a bit more blunt and upfront about how damaging these kinds of things can be."

Botha feels that Dame Uta's ideas add to a narrative that "there's some magical easy autism where you're just quirky, where everything in your life will eventually work out, and you're just using this as a crutch so that you can feel special, and it trivialises the reality of a whole bunch of people".

Botha says autistic people are united by key features: sensory sensitivity, a need for predictability, intense interests and struggles with communication.

"That doesn't mean that we will have the same lives or the same outcomes."

James Fitzpatrick was diagnosed in the 1990s, and doesn't speak. His father, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, is a retired GP.