Helen Pearson has just written a fascinating Nature News article about a British cohort study - the National Survey of Health and Development, run by the Medical Research Council - that's been following more than 5,000 subjects since their births in 1946. Cohort studies take groups of people who share a common characteristic, such as being born at a particular time or place or sharing a particular job, and follow them over a span of time. (In prospective cohort studies, the study period begins with enrollment; in retrospective cohort studies, medical records are used to study subjects' pasts…
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