STAT+: Why autism researchers aren’t convinced NIH can keep science and politics separate
A new $50 million NIH initiative to find the causes of autism faces questions about transparency and independence.
On the surface, the National Institutes of Health’s brand new autism research initiative is alluring: $50 million to study autism’s causes and services for autistic people, and access to data from existing public and private databases.
But the opportunity’s nontraditional funding mechanism, accelerated timeline, and lack of transparency around who will review the applications are casting a shadow over the initiative, which many scientists and potential applicants worry could fuel false claims about the condition.
“If you apply for this, you buy into the fact that the NIH can pick and choose and determine the direction of the research,” said David Amaral, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis who has received millions of dollars in funding from the NIH in his decades-long career. “You could generate data, but the conclusions, the interpretations of the data, may not necessarily be your own.”
