Hello, All. My bachelors degree is in biology and chemistry. I have helped to teach children how to do projects for science fairs, and I have judged science fairs. One of the things that we constantly remind the children is that an experiment can not *prove* anything. It can only disprove. Even if an experiment appears to prove something, it really can't because the researcher may not have had the perfect set of conditions (variables) or the perfect set of subjects. The one subject who could disprove the experiment's theory may not have been included in the experiment. Or perhaps the researcher picked the wrong variable to hold constant. You get the idea. I think this is where we run into trouble when we say that "research proves...". I am reminded of the research that supposedly shows that progesterone-only birth control pills do not impact breastmilk supply. Yet we all know women who, either immediately or as time went by, had milk supply trouble once they started on the mini-pill or got a shot of Depo-Provera. Sometimes I think what might happen is that so often we don't have access to the entire journal article, but rather can only read the abstract. The abstract is necessarily very short and can't possibly contain all the data the several-page research report does. So where the tables and other data may show that one or two mothers had trouble out of "n" subjects, statistically that is an insignificant number. So the abstract shortens that to "does not cause trouble." But believe me, if you are one of the mothers who did have trouble, it is not insignificant to you! I think that misunderstanding that research cannot prove anything is one of the reasons why "experience" and "evidence" do not always correspond. Dee Dee Kassing, BS, MLS, IBCLC Collinsville, Illinois, in central USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html