Another recurrent theme has been that of fostering closer connections between research efforts and real life. Patients, parents of patients, as well as interest and support groups should be involved in clinical research studies, both for the traditional purposes of fund raising and help with patient recruitment, but also to help researchers formulate the questions most important to patients. With the difficulty of defining samples that control for relevant variables and the severity and impact of autism, there should be special emphasis on high quality research, for example, diagnosis, sampling, measurement, design, and power. It is important to realize that funding poorly designed research is not only a waste of time and money that might better have been invested elsewhere but the results may actually mislead the research field and misinform the clinicians working with patients with autism. Moreover, it may well be that new modes of research collaboration need to be forged.
Multisite trials are certainly one such example.
Collegial agreements between independent research centers studying autism that a finding at one site should immediately be followed by an attempt to replicate and confirm that finding at another site, is another example. Autism registries, brain banks, and gene banks have also been mentioned as possible resources to foster excellent and cost-effective research efforts.