To researchers who have devoted their careers to studying pregnancy outcomes, this was a disastrous idea, both because it was a terribly inefficient way to find pregnancies and because it was incompatible with the collection of detailed biomedical data.

FORBES: What Caused A Billion Dollar Federal Study Of Child Health To Implode?

The study, led by the Barcelona-based centre, is claimed to be the first in humans to examine the association between acrylamide exposure during pregnancy and birth outcomes.

BBC: Chips and crisps 'linked to low birth weight babies'