But anyone who could wade past the inconclusive, though intriguing, findings of the Early Child Care Report, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, might be surprised to learn that the story is as much about the aggressive and defiant behavior of certain adults as it is about the behavior of children. And if there is a bully in the midst of the study's many "investigators," it is none other than the highest-profile researcher in the bunch: Jay Belsky.

Belsky, once a professor at Penn State and now a professor of psychology at Birkbeck College in London, was mentioned in the first few lines of nearly every story in major metropolitan dailies about the NICHD report findings. The New York Times ran a profile of him over the weekend, and his name also came up frequently in reports about the findings on TV. Not only does Belsky have a far-ranging reputation in the area of chilling pronouncements about the impact of child care, but he is consistently identified as a "lead investigator" in the NICHD study. This makes him the go-to guy for reporters, some of whom have been following the child-care study since it was launched in 1991 at 10 data collection sites around the country.

Says Belsky about his role at center stage: "If I am monopolizing the press, it is only because I am speaking clearly and cleanly about our data and the press appreciates that."

The problem, according to several of Belsky's colleagues, is that Belsky's dire pronouncements are not based on conclusive data, and his identification as a "principal investigator" in the study is just plain wrong. His standout performance this week as the official bearer of bad news about child care and aggressive behavior not only caused familiar anxiety and seizures of guilt among parents but inflamed growing feelings of frustration and anger among Belsky's colleagues. Many of them are no longer on speaking terms with Belsky; at least one has suggested that the NICHD take disciplinary action against him.

(A spokesman for the National Institutes of Health said that disciplinary action can only be initiated if a written claim impugning Belsky's scientific integrity is submitted. The matter would then most likely be referred for investigation to the university where he is based.)

Belsky "is not a lead investigator," says Sarah Friedman, a psychologist at the NICHD and one of the 13 lead investigators in the study. "I understand that he identifies himself as that, but he is misinforming people and he knows better. It's a problem. He is not telling the whole story and is creating a panic."

The whole story is that the Early Child Care Study is not a controlled experiment but an observational study, which, by definition, does not yield the kind of data that researchers need to determine the actual causes for the behavior they observe. In a controlled experiment, scientists would control the random placement of children in child care or with their mothers, which, of course, for ethical reasons they cannot do. Instead, they, along with caregivers and mothers, observe the behavior of children in situations selected by their own families.

While some links between time in child care and certain behaviors have been noted by researchers, it is impossible to conclude that extended child care causes children to behave aggressively or defiantly. Researchers also stress that the percentage of children demonstrating aggressive behavior in the study was well within the normal range for any population.

Says Friedman, "We have no way in this study to attribute cause and effect. In the case of these findings, there is no way to attribute causality."

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