From Art Jahnke, BU Today~<\/p>\n
“The National Research Council has raised concerns in a letter<\/a> posted on its website yesterday about the methodology used in an ongoing study of the risks associated with the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) on the Boston University Medical Campus.<\/p>\n The NRC found that the risk assessment, which is being supervised by the National Institutes of Health<\/a> and conducted by the consultancy Tetra Tech<\/a>, had yet to respond to a recommendation for tiered quantitative and qualitative analyses and that its researchers erred when they used expert opinions as a substitute for absence of actual data on 13 pathogens in a modeling process. The NRC committee, whose concerns stem from a scheduled review of a preliminary draft of the risk assessment, urged Tetra Tech to make a \u201cmidcourse correction\u201d and use actual data rather than the opinions of experts.”<\/p>\n