Download STUDY NEED 1. Introduction

1 STUDY NEED 1. Introduction
Sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, neurobiologists and other behavioral scientists have advanced rich theories of individual behavior and group interactions. Our ability to test these theories, and ultimately our ability to understand human behavior, rests on datasets gathered by these scientists, by governments and by corporations. A review of existing datasets, these catalogues of human behavior that guide scholarship and policy in the United States and throughout the world, reveals both their power and their limitations. The power of these datasets is that they provide detailed catalogs of genetic data or data about finances, or data about cognitive function. Their great limitation is that no single study examines all of these aspects of human behavior, biology and environment in a single group of subjects. Just as geneticists working in the 1970s consisted of camps of scholars with deep expertise on isolated genetic systems, scholars of human behavior remain largely Balkanized into groups with deep, but local, expertise in specific aspects of human behavior. In the 1970s the US scientific community responded to the challenge of a fragmented genetic community by proposing and executing the Human Genome Project. Rather than a piecewise approach to understanding genetics, a group of visionary scientists proposed a complete catalog of the human genome – a proposal to transform genetics from a series of isolated fiefdoms into a global synthetic field. In proposing that vision, the human geneticists borrowed the language and authority of large-­‐‑scale physical science. Since before World War 11
II, physical scientists had responded to large-­‐‑scale challenges with large-­‐‑scale consortia that have ranged from the Manhattan Project to the Hubble Space Telescope. What they produced -­‐‑ the consensus sequence of the human genome, a new class of bioinformatics, the tools for rapidly sequencing the genomes of other species, even the ability to fully sequence the genomes of individuals at low cost – have revolutionized the biological sciences. Here we raise the possibility that it is now technologically feasible to undertake a large-­‐‑scale measurement of human behavior that spans the sciences from sociology to neuroscience. Our goal is to begin by capturing, for 10,000 people, in approximately 2,500 households, living in a major metropolitan area, literally all aspects of their human lifecycles. Beginning with genome and microbiome data, developmental psychological measurements, cognitive testing, educational tracking, personality analysis, economic development, social networks, health and retirement, to name just a few areas, we propose a deep and fundamental change in how we understand human behavior. Our goal is to develop the foundation for an International Observatory for Human Behavior. Just as the development of advanced optics and computers led to the development of national observatories for understanding the heavens a few decades ago, we believe that the time is right for turning our scientific lens toward the study of our most valuable asset: human behavior. The power of a comprehensive approach of this kind can be seen in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Prior to the development of the SDSS, data collection was dominated by individual astrophysicists competing for limited access to telescopes, which they used to collect limited data sets that were primarily useful for addressing a specific question. The SDSS revolutionized the field by shifting to a new approach -­‐‑ a systematic examination of the sky. The most efficient instruments were used to build a comprehensive, publicly available dataset applicable to a broad range of questions in astrophysics. This resource has become invaluable to astrophysicists, supporting thousands of publications by researchers from around the world. We envision that a comprehensive survey of human behavior could similarly galvanize the social sciences. 2. Mission
Focused large-­‐‑scale longitudinal studies have historically provided critical scientific insights. For example, the medical sciences were, in large measure, revolutionized by what has come to be known as “The Framingham Heart Study,” begun in 1948. In that visionary project, the extremely detailed health (and behavioral) data of roughly 5,000 subjects was followed for what was initially imagined to be a 20-­‐‑year period. At the time, the data gathered about the cardiac health of these subjects was at an unprecedented level of detail and the analysis of that data provided many of the fundamental insights about cardiac health that now serve as centerpieces of international healthcare. In the domain of social sciences, the power of this kind of approach was employed in 1992 when the National Institute of Aging created the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This study behaviorally and financially profiles more than 20,000 Americans once every two years with a questionnaire – and recently with a request for genetic data. The results of those questionnaires are then made available to scholars for purposes ranging from assessments of US retirement and health care policy to the development of models of cognitive decline over the lifespan. And despite the fact that the HRS asks only a handful of questions of its participants every two years, it has served as the gold standard for understanding and characterizing human behavior in its domain. Indeed, studies of the kind pioneered by the HRS have now been conducted in dozens of countries. What has never been attempted, however, is a large-­‐‑
scale and highly detailed measurement of human behavior – an effort to build a broad-­‐‑scale set of behavioral measurements that rival the detail of the Framingham study’s medical questions – but in domains ranging from the biomolecular to the sociological. We propose just such a study, initially in a limited set of 10,000 individuals making up 2,500 families in a major metropolitan area. Our goal would be, over a 20-­‐‑year period, to make highly precise and detailed measurements of behavior and outcomes across all the important domains, not just those related to heart health. Such data would provide a database for the nearly complete characterization of behaviors of scientific and policy interest – a “human genome project” for behavior. What we believe makes this possible today are two huge advances in technology: the computer-­‐‑based tools for aggregating and analyzing truly massive datasets and the development of new technologies, like smartphones and web portals, which allow researchers to follow subjects at an unprecedented level of detail as they move through all aspects of their daily lives. A critical feature of human behavior is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Human behavior emerges as a complex system from interactions at many scales. Social and natural scientists across the many disciplines that study human behavior have worked hard to demonstrate this fact. They have accomplished that by working to mate existing datasets, by working to develop novel datasets and by seeking to expand outside their native disciplines. Over the last decade there have been significant efforts to combine studies at different levels to derive a more holistic picture of human behavior: Social network studies have begun to make personality measurements. The HRS has begun genotyping. We take these as clear evidence that the need for synthetic measurement is pressing. Such 12
studies are beginning to form painstaking one-­‐‑at-­‐‑a-­‐‑
time linkages, just as studies of genetics began to build linkages in the 1970s. But what we propose here is a concerted effort to develop a large-­‐‑scale database that links all of these domains in a single pool of subjects, initially in a single large-­‐‑scale study to be conducted in New York City. Our goal, however, is for these focused measurements in New York to serve as the nucleus for a worldwide effort to understand and catalog human behavior. We stress from the outset that the goal of this proposed study is fantastically inclusive. Our intention is to bring together biologists, psychologists, economists, sociologists and anthropologists to develop a truly interdisciplinary catalog of human behavior that can play a transformative role in science and public policy. 13