A controversial new study from Denmark shows a link between circumcision and autism, although experts differ sharply over what to make of it.

“All we can say at this point is that there is a statistical association between circumcision and autism,” study co-author Dr. Morten Frisch, a consultant at the Statens Serum Institut (State Serum Institute) and adjunct professor of sexual health epidemiology at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, told The Huffington Post in an email. “We cannot say whether it is a causal association or some spurious non-causal link for which we currently don’t have an explanation.”

“One has to be very careful drawing any conclusions from studies like this,” Dr. Douglas S. Diekema, a pediatrician at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the authors of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement that is broadly supportive of circumcision, told The Huffington Post in an email. “They raise questions for further study, but do not provide answers… Correlation does not imply or prove causation.”

If circumcision really did cause autism, Diekema said, one would expect the rates of autism to have fallen in recent decades along with circumcision rates. “In fact,” he said in the email, “we have seen just the opposite.”

Read full, original story: Circumcision Linked To Autism In Controversial New Study