As a part of a public health agenda that has made autism one of its most publicized planks, the US National Institutes of Health plans to award $5.1 million to fund an Autism Replication, Validation, and Reproducibility Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The project is one part of NIH’s Autism Data Science Initiative, which a 22 September 2025 NIH press release described as intended “to explore contributors to the causes and rising prevalence of autism spectrum disorder.”
The Autism Replication, Validation, and Reproducibility Center at Cornell is only one of 13 projects funded under NIH’s Autism Data Science Initiative. For a listing of all 13 projects (including what agencies and principle investigators received them and abstracts about what the projects will do), please see Autism Data Science Initiative Funded Research: Funded Projects. The total funding for the projects amounts to slightly greater than $50 million.
The funding of the the Cornell center (and other projects) comes in the context of the February 2025 freeze of more than $65 million dollars of funding for US Department of Education grants (see SET articles for and 11 February 2025 and 12 February 2025) and the August 2025 decision by the US Supreme Court to allow termination of nearly $800 million in grants previously made by the US National Institutes of Health.
The announcement of this NIH projects came during the White House press conference 22 September 2025. Many of the ideas and details about the initiative were overshadowed by President Trump’s admonition at that same event about Tylenol: “Don’t take it.” (See “Research on acetaminophen as a cause of autism—updated: What evidence do we have about a causal relationship between ‘Tylenol’ and autism?”)
Also see media coverage such as
“US autism research gets $50-million funding boost — amid row over Tylenol: An injection of funding into genetic and environmental factors underlying autism was eclipsed by Trump’s controversial claims about acetaminophen” by Helen Pearson in Nature 26 September 2025.
“Meet the Autism Data Science Initiative grantees: The awarded projects plan to study gene-and-environment interactions in people, stem cells and organoids, as well as predictors of positive life outcomes in autistic youth and adults” by Calli McMurray for The Transmitter 3 October 2025.
“Scientists are excited by the NIH’s $50 million autism research plan: The new initiative was announced in tandem with the Trump administration’s disputed claims about Tylenol’s links to autism” by Yaakov Zinberg for Chemical & Engineering News on 3 October 2025.