A prediction: this line of research will eventually produce a (spurious) link between vaccines and autism. And it can be done without any breach of ethics or shady research procedures. The funding agency is clearly fishing for this result. Say for example they fund 20 research studies investigating the link between autism and vaccines: 19 of the 20 find no effect. Most of these are never published because negative effects are difficult to publish. One in 20 finds a significant result that is not a genuine effect, but what statisticians call a Type I error: detecting a real result that isn't actually present (in fact, the chance of at least one Type I error is 50:50 after just 14 studies). That Type I error is published because it is a significant result. Voila - a link between autism and vaccines! But if it is a real effect, you will be able to replicate it. If you can't replicate it, it's not real.