[quote Somethingsnappy]@BertieBotts. I couldn't access that article as I'm not on Facebook. Can I find it anywhere else, or are you able to summarise at all?[/quote]
Well it was the bit on FB that I wanted to share but it's Amy Brown and she linked to this article that she wrote. I will include her text. The rest of the post is not my words!
Feeling the need to share this today after reading something online that failed to see how the conclusions of many infant feeding studies are underestimated / inaccurate / plain wrong.
Sometimes it feels like some studies have been designed by someone who has never encountered a baby let alone is an expert in feeding.
And certainly they often get interpreted by people who might have a good understanding of research methods but no understanding of infant feeding and how variables should be measured / the limitations of certain measurements.
I often see research being misused in a way that is unfair to those who haven't been able to breastfeed. One the one hand you have suggestions that breastfeeding will prevent anything bad happening and babies who are formula fed will immediately become unwell which simply isn't true. It's about the likelihood of something happening not a definitive.
But on the other hand you have a whole load of studies that underestimate how breastfeeding can protect babies as they take incomplete / odd measurements and then conclude things that often aren't related to the actual data at all.
Research is difficult. It can be really tricky (and costly) to do very high quality research into feeding outcomes. This doesn't mean that research with limitations should not have been conducted but rather the research should have been accurately reported.
Examples of inaccurate research / misreporting include things like lumping all babies who have ever been breastfed into one 'breastfed' group. So the baby who has one feed is grouped the same as the child who feeds for three years.
Comparing groups where there isn't that much difference at all in how they were fed despite labels of 'breastfed' or 'formula fed'. Most were mixed fed.
Or studies being misinterpreted and then inaccurately shared. The PROBIT trial is often rolled out as an example of breast versus formula feeding when most babies were breastfed.
One odd study counted babies as not breastfed if they weren't exclusively breastfed for 10 weeks. They could have breastfed for 5 years but because it wasn't exclusive then they were thrown in a not breastfed group.
And don't get me started on sibling studies as a claim that it's only parental background that matters - when often the 'breastfed' sibling was only fed for a few days or there was no data at all on duration.
And studies that claim there's no impact of breastfeeding at all because there was no difference in child behaviour when they were school aged 🧐
We need accurate data to be collected and reported so that parents can judge it for themselves. And we need studies to show the full impacts because then (she says dreaming) we might end up with more investment in supporting breastfeeding.
But also, although it's useful stuff from a science and policy perspective, I'd rather see research conducted that actually leads to stuff that helps women breastfeed for longer. Research that explores how they feel... what helps them feed... what they need etc. And that goes for bottle feeding and mixed feeding too.
What research is actually helpful? It's certainly not research that is poorly designed or interpreted in an inaccurate way.
professoramybrown.co.uk/articles/f/the-strangely-inaccurate-world-of-breastfeeding-research