> So there is a clear result found and then post hoc there is an explanation made for why this makes sense. That's a bit of a red flag since you preferably hypothesize first, but let's look at the analysis.

Eh, this doesn’t look to be a P-hacking attempt. Scientific exploration doesn’t always hit the hypothesis first model. Ideally this paper should be a source of future specific hypothesis and experiments. Though, IMHO, their implicit hypothesis is that metabolism is a core feature of ASD.

The points about the predictive power in fig 3 are interesting.