I honestly can't help but feel like the main point of people whinging at autism being a broad diagnosis is because they don't like that it makes getting treatment easy (especially coming from "the economist").

Maybe I'm not being charitable. But that really does feel like the only real outcome of trying to piecemeal the diagnosis.

I don't believe research or treatment is negatively impacted in anyway by the diagnosis being broad. If anything, that opens doors so that research isn't accidentally too narrowly focused.