Merriken v. Cressman, 364 F. Supp. 913 (E.D. Pa. 1973), is an old case that anticipated many of the ethical and legal problems implicated by intensive gathering of data on identifiable school children, supposedly to pave the way for prophylactic behavioral interventions. Behavioral science is not necessarily without hazard. Issues of the kind raised here have arisen again in the National Children's Study, and these problems persist to the extent that sponsor agencies, researchers, Institutional Review Boards, and cognizant regulatory agencies fail to take them seriously.