Autism is an interesting one - in fact, one of my friends in high school seemed to think that I was mildly autistic but then again, the crux of his argument was that I liked maths and he didn't see how any normal person could possibly do so (he's an arts student)
Either way, it was bothering me enough to ask my flatmate for his honest opinion and he seemed to think that there was no way I was autistic.
I've read a bit about it and I'm not sure that autistic people are necessarily uncreative or unimaginative; after all, there have been many autistic artists/writers/actors/musicians. I think it's more that they crave novelty to a lesser extent than normal people, tend towards rigid routine and familiarity, obsess over certain topics and lean towards the mathematical/logical/structured side of things and most of these traits are seen as being adverse to creativity.
The thing with autism is that it's more a spectrum than a specific disorder and people can be affected to different degrees. Low functioning autistics are undoubtedly communicatively dysfunctional whereas high functioning autistics will often speak with perfect grammar, syntax and (possibly) delivery and excel in most lingual tests, but may struggle a bit with figurative language and comprehension. One theory regarding the poor comprehension is that they obsess over small scale details and have trouble seeing the bigger picture. Some autistics may be introverted or anti-social... high functioning autistics might even be sociable and function relatively normally in social situations but exhibit a few odd traits such as lack of eye contact, lack of empathy, or one-sidedness. One possible explanation is that they are initially socially dysfunctional but over time, learn to (or are capable of learning to) emulate the 'normal' social behaviour which is naturally built into other people.
And the thing with many disorders is that they're akin to horoscopes in that they're general enough to seemingly apply to many people. I guess what I'm saying is, a pedantic and introverted scientist with OCD may fit the autistic/Asperger's stereotype perfectly, but not all introverted and obsessive scientists are autistic. It's only too easy to slap a label on a bunch of symptoms, but where do you draw the line between personality
variations and
disorders?