The revolution continues with a study on the health of 21 proposed 100,000 American children known national study Children (NCS). Last Friday, a leading biostatistician who is a member of the NCS advisory committee resigned, just two weeks after another member of the committee resigned. Both are angry about a sudden change in the sampling design of the study.
In an email dated March 16, Jonas Ellenberg University of Pennsylvania presented his resignation to the NCS director Steven Hirschfeld at the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) . His note contains no explanation, but said: "I urge that the NCS to be examined again by the Institute of Medicine, as I believe that the current view of the NICHD NCS does not reflect the study design parameters reviewed and approved by the IOM in 08. "the reference is to an IOM report that praised the NCS plan to recruit pregnant women living in a statistical sample of 100 US counties. email Ellenberg was reported on Nature blog.
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided that this geographical approach is too expensive. instead, the agency wants to reduce 15% from the current $ 193 million NCS budget in 2013 by recruiting by health care providers, which could mean health maintenance organizations (HMO). "the registered population is no longer a national probability sample but, instead, a well-described cohort followed longitudinally "or many years, a budget document said (see pp. 34-35).
Ellenberg said Science Insider that he resign because the advisory committee was not informed of this proposed change in the sampling plan. "We were told nada" says Ellenberg. "If we are not there to give advice about magnitude of a change, I do not know why we're here."
Ellenberg say that it is not necessarily opposed to a sample-based supplier, which could still be nationally representative. (this could mean randomly sample the nation's health care providers, simple medical practices to large HMO). the population Association of America, which represents demographers, says NIH in a letter on March 6 that its members would support a sample based on the supplier if it is done "very carefully" and not let groups such as immigrants and the uninsured . "Nothing less than a national probability sample of compromising data quality," says the letter.
A Johns Hopkins University environmental health researcher Ellen Silbergeld resigned from the advisory committee on March 5, as reported by Nature blog. She told Science Insider that his impression is that the study will not use a "consistent pattern" of recruitment but will instead use a "mix and community studies based on supplier" who will no data that can be compared between sites. "I do not think it will be scientifically valid," she said.
Some followers of the NCS, including Ellenberg, are also concerned about another issue : the NICHD terminates the contracts of seven centers "vanguard" which enrolled pregnant wife for a pilot study and plans to transform their operations to a single national contractor this summer.
Questions about NCS could come tomorrow and next week in the House of Representatives and the Senate hearings on the 2013 budget of the NIH. An article today about the loss of a South Dakota State University contract (SDSU) $ 13.1 million, 5 years for the center of avant-garde of his condition shows what is at stake for some districts Congress. SDSU expects to lose 27 full-time and eight part-time jobs. Many postdocs and graduate students will also be affected.
The loss of the contract will be "a very substantial loss" for both the university and the local community, Vice President for Research Kevin Kephart said SDSU The Brookings Register . And the Dakotas not HMO, they would be left out of an HMO-based study, the article points out.
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