Dear all:

The age of the study has no relevance in terms of its value.  Studies should be evaluated on the 
strength and relevance of their study design and how well the prior assumptions hold up with the 
actual implementation of the study. 

For instance, the Schanler study was well designed in some regards, but the assumption of how 
many babies would develop infections was off by a huge factor.  

The recent study that was quoted about eyeballing bottles and pumping milk as the "gold 
standard" compared to test weighs was completely off and does not negate a plethora of 
exceedingly well designed studies that showed that test weighing was far more accurate than 
eyeballing bottles.  And if you never use a scale for any other reason, taking a baby off the breast 
for some health care practitioner that doesn't understand this basic fact is the one area where I 
would urge you to intervene and not allow that baby to be taken off the breast.

Some of the best studies are in fact quite old.  I'm sad that I lost old study done in Chicago that 
showed death rates equal to those of the worst situation I've seen in developing areas of the world 
due to the increase in artificial feeding.  Much of the work in regards to what happens during 
severe malnutrition of pregnant women comes out of the Dutch famine.  A situation that we would 
never want to recreate in the name of science.

Finally, given that much of the "new" studies are no longer funded by public sources, you have to 
look very closely at the sources of funding.  This is across the board in whatever field you are 
operating.  My dentist has said that the research studies have become so bad over the last 20 
years because of the increasing influence of the profit-making incentive of the various dental 
supply companies that she no longer trusts her own journals.  Sound familiar?

If you want real science that is untainted by a profit motive to progress, you should lobby your 
politicians for funding to be set aside for such purposes.

The only philosophy I ever had was during my doctoral studies.  I was force-fed a philosophy of 
science class and had to discuss epistemology during my doctoral defense.  The chair of my 
committee had this moment when he was quite gleeful and declared "Oh, that's effect 
modification" ... putting an epidemiological term to the concepts of another committee member 
who wanted me to explain the "multiple reality" approach of "naturalistic inquiry".  Sigh.... I can't 
remember the details, but I do remember there is a strong scientific philosophy behind why you 
don't just keep repeating the same experiment over and over again to see if something has 
changed.  You DO look at different aspects of the same problem.  Wish I could dredge up the 
particulars of the philosophical argument behind that assertion, but I am claiming the Permanent 
Head Damage (PHD) that comes with surviving the doctoral experience.

Best regards, Susan Burger

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