Again, though, it needs to be stressed that the survey preceded the Baby P controversy.
Between 2008 – the year in which the Baby P controversy erupted – and 2012, the number of in-depth assessments of children at risk more than doubled to 220,670.
The NAO criticises the government for what it calls "poor progress" on its 2010 promise to overhaul child protection services in the wake of the Baby P controversy, and highlights its "piecemeal" attempts to improve failing services.
Munro, whose review of child protection in England was commissioned in the wake of the Baby P controversy, added that mandatory reporting could lead to a much higher rate of "false positive" allegations, and could worsen children's safety if professionals were taken away from other areas of work to handle the possible deluge of referrals.
A protest campaign has been launched against the "harsh" treatment of the council boss at the heart of the Baby P controversy, with headteachers and social work professionals warning that the fallout from her dismissal could put vulnerable children at risk.
For a detailed chronology of the controversy, see Moreau, 1999, p. 25 28.
However, here is a considerable controversy about adjusting the "p value" after multiple tests on clinical-orientated studies [34, 35].
Last month, Nature published a similar study by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo that was also caught up in the controversy (Science, 4 May, p. 529).
Recently much controversy has surrounded the concept of the p value, specifically its incorrect use in published works.
Lane, Nadel, and Kaszniak (2000, p. 107) suggest the controversy between discrete affect and dimensional (see n. 39 above) approaches will likely be settled only by neuroscience.
