[daleharvey]

Emily Oyster wrote good books about how a lot of the popular claims around giving birth / raising children have quite a severe lack of data that supports those claims. For breastfeeding in particular there isn't much data to separate whether breastfeeding is actually helpful at all vs being in an economical position that would allow someone to breasfeed.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-abo...

[rp3]

Did this author even read the papers she cites?

> In the first camp — the randomized trial camp — we have one very large-scale study from Belarus. Known as the PROBIT trial, it was run in the 1990s and continued to follow up as the children aged.

And then later

> The researchers analyzed the impacts of breastfeeding on allergies and asthma; on cavities; and on height, blood pressure, weight and various measures of obesity. They found no evidence of nursing’s impacts on any of these outcomes.

If you go to the PROBIT trial, you see it clearly stated that they did find an impact from nursing:

> Conclusions: Our experimental intervention increased the duration and degree (exclusivity) of breastfeeding and decreased the risk of gastrointestinal tract infection and atopic eczema in the first year of life.

[daleharvey]

> Infants in the treatment group — who, remember, were more likely to be breastfed — had fewer gastrointestinal infections (read: less diarrhea) and were less likely to experience eczema and other rashes. However, there were no significant differences in any of the other outcomes considered. These include: respiratory infections, ear infections, croup, wheezing and infant mortality.

Apparently so, did you read the post you are criticizing?

[rp3]

The author made it seem like breastfeeding had no impact, but rather they just cherry-picked the conditions to look for from the study, making no mention of things that were impacted.

[daleharvey]

The author did not make it seem like that, they explicitly pointed out otherwise, the 5th paragraph:

> This is not to say that there aren’t some benefits to breastfeeding. In poor countries where water quality is very poor, these benefits may be very large since the alternative is to use formula made with contaminated water. In developed countries — the main focus of the discussion here — this isn’t an issue. Even in developed countries, there are a few health benefits of breastfeeding for children in the first year of life (more on this below).

[rp3]

They literally linked to a study, said "this is the best study", then said "this study didn't show benefits in [any] these areas", without mentioning the benefits the study did show. Belarus is/was not a country at risk of contaminated water, even after the collapse of the USSR.

[daleharvey]

You are replying to a thread that already contains 2 direct quotes from the author specifically discussing the benefits that the study did support.

[sacrosancty]

Huh? That's consistent, isn't it? No impact on cavities, height, blood pressure, etc. but an impact on GI tract infection and eczma. Well, those don't sound like serious problems so maybe it's not worth it.