摘要：We are grateful for the opportunity to com-ment on the importance of careful interpreta-tion and communication of epidemiological results. We concur with Burstyn et al. that scientists have a great responsibility to pres-ent their findings accurately. Indeed, scien-tists have a duty not only to generate research results but also to engage in dialog about the interpretation and meaning of these results. We also agree that our study on maternal smoking in pregnancy and the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) had limitations, including hetero geneous outcome groupings, residual confounding, and exposure mis-classification (Kalkbrenner et al. 2012). We do not, however, share the conviction that these limitations void the validity and contri-bution of our study or that our results should not be accompanied with an interpretation
