U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
bloomberg.com
U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
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Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#2This is really a drag, because I was hoping that study (which has been on the wish list of a lot of scientists for a long time) would be fully funded and operated over the long term. Prospective, longitudinal study design is the only valid way to answer a number of important questions about child development. On the other hand, the reason this particular study project was cancelled was a legitimate reason: "The study 'as currently designed is not feasible,' Collins said in a Dec. 12 statement on the NIH’s website."[1] That conclusion was based on concerns raised by the National Academy of Sciences when reviewing the pilot phase of the study.[2]
So of course the next step for scientists would be to learn whatever can be learned from the pilot program in the just-cancelled study, and then design a new study and try again. I will highly support research projects of this kind, which now will have more benefit to my grandchildren than to my children, who are already almost fully grown up into adulthood.
P.S. A big hat tip to the Hacker News participant who found this news story, which is well reported and links to key online documents, for finding a great source about an important story. The key online documents are press releases from government offices, but this story adds a journalist's contacts with other sources and establishes context for the latest news on the study.
[1] "Statement on the National Children’s Study" 12 December 2014
http://nih.gov/about/director/12122014_statement_ACD.htm
[2] "National Children’s Study Has Great Potential to Expand Understanding of Children’s Health and Well-Being, But Key Design Elements Need Further Development for Study to Be Successful" 16 June 2014
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#3This is really a drag, because I was hoping that study (which has been on the wish list of a lot of scientists for a long time) would be fully funded and operated over the long term. Prospective, longitudinal study design is the only valid way to answer a number of important questions about child development. On the other hand, the reason this particular study project was cancelled was a legitimate reason: "The study…
I am glad to see that a decision was made to not throw good money into a bad project. They realized that the study as designed was infeasible. I did not see specific reasons but I can only imagine the difficulty of tracking 100,000 individuals through roughly two decades of life, and accounting for the untold number of uncontroled variables that would be present in such an effort.
With research funding recently, it's important that scarce funding be directed to projects that have a reasonable chance at achieving their research goals. This project didn't.
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#4This is really a drag, because I was hoping that study (which has been on the wish list of a lot of scientists for a long time) would be fully funded and operated over the long term. Prospective, longitudinal study design is the only valid way to answer a number of important questions about child development. On the other hand, the reason this particular study project was cancelled was a legitimate reason: "The study…
I am glad to see that a decision was made to not throw good money into a bad project. They realized that the study as designed was infeasible. I did not see specific reasons but I can only imagine the difficulty of tracking 100,000 individuals through roughly two decades of life, and accounting for the untold number of uncontroled variables that would be present in such an effort. With research funding recently, it's…
It should be noted that there are a number of birth cohort studies ongoing in Europe, where single payer healthcare makes it dramatically easier to follow people.
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#5This is really a drag, because I was hoping that study (which has been on the wish list of a lot of scientists for a long time) would be fully funded and operated over the long term. Prospective, longitudinal study design is the only valid way to answer a number of important questions about child development. On the other hand, the reason this particular study project was cancelled was a legitimate reason: "The study…
i would have hoped they figured that out 1.2 billion $ ago
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#6Keep perspective: 3% of the budget was used for risk analysis. The conclusion of that research was that it's not worth spending the remaining 97%.
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#7This is really a drag, because I was hoping that study (which has been on the wish list of a lot of scientists for a long time) would be fully funded and operated over the long term. Prospective, longitudinal study design is the only valid way to answer a number of important questions about child development. On the other hand, the reason this particular study project was cancelled was a legitimate reason: "The study…
i would have hoped they figured that out 1.2 billion $ ago
A fair amount of research has gone into figuring out the study - the NCS was a major undertaking, involved laying down a lot of logistics, figuring out methodological issues, etc.
Also the Vanguard study, while a pilot study, was a fairly serious undertaking.
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#8$1.3b to track 100k kids for 7 years. That's about $2k/child/year, which sounds insanely expensive. How can a study cost that much? You could buy each participant an iPad _every_ year and given them $100/month for filling out surveys, or you could hire 1 researcher for every 25 kids, which sounds grossly inefficient -- and you'd still be under $1.3b for 7 years.
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#9Wow, $1.3 billion is a huge amount for a single study. For comparison, the Framingham Heart Study, going on 65 years, has an annual budget of about $10 million:
(Concerns that the 2013 sequester would cut about $4 million, about 40% of its budget here:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/blog/2013/10/09/framing... )
Any good accounts of how the $1.3B was spent?
Re: U.S. Child Study Canceled After $1.3B
#10$1.3b... wow.
I hate to say it but: this is what you get with Goverment in charge of research.