Dear all:

Ours is a field that emerged because many events conspired to corrupt the normal functions of birthing and infant feeding. Because of this we are primed to be particularly sensitive to conspiracies and suspect them in places where they may or may not be occurring.  Unfortunately, that very tendency on our parts leads us to forget that sometimes those who are pointing their finger at supposed conspiracies, are themselves, some of the best con artists out there.  

I must say I enjoyed a certain amount of that emotion that is better expressed as schadenfraud (an apology to our German colleagues because I know I've misspelled this) when Chandra pulled one over on the formula industry by bilking them out of research funds when he went from inflating the numbers of study subjects he claimed to have in his studies to increasing inflation of the numbers to the point where one of his graduate students finally blew the whistle on him.  What was really much worse is that Chandra apparently set up shell nongovernmental organizations that were supposed to be helping developing areas of the world that actually did nothing at all.  A man out of the Bernie Madoff mode.  I remember thinking of him as a guru. 

But sometimes, we are the ones who are a victim of our own deeply rooted suspicions. 

There is yet another example of a so-called researcher (the problem is that he really wasn't a researcher at all) who fabricated data.  This case was so extreme that all his coauthors pulled their names from the paper and the journal, for the first time ever, removed the article from publication.  I had known that he had received huge amounts of money from lawyers and research grants in the millions that were then not used for research.  But I must confess that when I heard the extent to which and the manner in which he fabricated the data, I think he is of the same caliber as Bernie and Chandra.  

In this case, he is a man who feeds into one of our Lord Voldemort topics - those that cannot be named (at least on Lactnet).  It is a shame that he fueled unnecessary fears that actually detract from and distract from more important issues of larger public health concern about this Lord Voldemort topic. And, I have to say that knowing more about the type of invasive procedures he did in his own pseudo research, he came quite close to some of the more horrific breaches of human ethics violations.

Just because someone works for a company that may have a conflict of interest does not necessarily mean their research is trash.  Just as, in this case, someone who seems to work against companies that may have a for profit motive are not necessarily shining knights of glory.  One must always assess the situation critically and realize that we all have biases and we most need to assess the areas in which we are most prone to our own bias.

Sincerely,

Susan E Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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