An article entitled “How Healthy Is Our State for Kids? Study Will Tell” describes a study that would recruit and enroll participants in 96 locations over the next 4 years and track them from...

An article entitled “How Healthy Is Our State for Kids? Study Will Tell” describes a study that would recruit and enroll participants in 96 locations over the next 4 years and track them from conception through their children’s twenty-first year. Participants would have at least 15 in person visits by local research teams. For the $2.7 billion study, “workers will collect biological samples from the mother and child, as well as air, water, dirt and dust from the child"s environment. The study also will examine many aspects of children"s lives: genetics, neighborhoods, schools, chemical exposures linked to the atmosphere, food or water supplies, and social and behavioral environments.”28

a. Will this be an observational study or an experiment?

b. Which of these would be most worrisome here: treatments that are unethical to impose, people’s behaviors affected by their awareness of participating in a prospective study, or people’s faulty memories in a retrospective study?