The “Born in Bradford” (BiB) project began as long ago as 2007, when the founding cohort of expectant mothers was piped on board by one of the city’s antenatal clinics. Ten years later, there was a feeling that much of West Yorkshire had been turned into a giant research lab: 13,000 parental volunteers, a hundred primary schools and dozens of GP surgeries had combined to offer an unprecedented range of data on the cognitive development, sleep patterns and general health of the area’s under-10s.