Environmental Science› Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis› Urban Green Space and Health

Environmental epidemiology — Neighbourhood natural space, parks and private garden access

Submitted 2026-10-22

Field: Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and MutagenesisType: No effect foundArea: environmental epidemiologyTarget: Neighbourhood natural space, parks and private garden accessStage: full study

Hypothesis

Access to parks, other natural space and a private garden should bend the trajectory of children’s social, emotional and behavioural development.

What failed

In 2909 urban Scottish children followed from age 4, modelling interactions of park area, total natural space and garden access with age and age squared gave little evidence of any influence on the trajectory of difficulty scores between 4 and 6, even though cross-sectional associations with garden access and natural space were present.

Broken assumption

Greenspace keeps improving children’s development over the period measured.

Why

The authors suggest any beneficial influence had already taken effect at younger ages than the window observed.

From the published paper: Richardson et al. Environmental Research, 2017. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

Unvetted lead — read the papers

New hypotheses this failure suggests, each with a crucial experiment, a rival explanation of the original result, and the papers it rests on. Written by AI from paper titles and abstracts found on OpenAlex (and Europe PMC, for life and health sciences).

Related failures (1)

Matched on shared genes, mechanisms and ways of failing as well as wording. Each shows why it matched — treat these as leads rather than verdicts.

environmental epidemiologyUrinary parabens and male reproductive health
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In men from an infertility clinic (hormones n = 167, semen n = 190), methyl and propyl paraben were not significantly associated with any outcome, and butyl paraben was not associated with hormones or conventional semen parameters; only a positive association of butyl paraben with sperm DNA damage was seen (p for trend = 0.03).
Why it matched: same research area

Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.