Re: Comforting Article

[Guest guest]

Hi Rick

One of the problems is in this area that most of the work

published in peer-reviewed journals nevertheless represents a

vested interest, as few genuinely neutral academic

establishments actually make helmets themselves, therefore

most of the research into the effectiveness of helmets is

published by the orthotics industry. For example, the last paper

in the recent journal Prosthetics and Orthotics you have been

discussing with Christie on the way forward for plagio is written

by Tim Littlefield of Cranial Technologies. Now, he is probably an

expert in the field having worked in this area for so long, but he

cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be a neutral

academic and his recommendations will clearly be pro-band as

well pro-repo and education.

The Atlanta study will be fascinating, I think Hopkins are

also doing one, and I know the specialist I went to see in the UK,

Dr Blecher is also involved in a multi-site plagio study, so there

are some promising studies which are yet to report.

However, up until now I think the standard of research papers is

poor, given their origins. This might seem unfair to those

beavering away within orthotics companies doing very excellent

research, but personally I would always be sceptical about

industry produced research full stop, whether it be plagio studies

produced by orthotic companies or, in my area, NRT or Zyban

studies produced by pharmaceutical companies.

I haven' t read the posts about your decisions about your son yet,

so I hope you are working your way successfully through this

minefield!

Take care

Hannah (mum to Lucia, London, UK)

Cranio grad

>

> >

> > From: " hannah_farrimond " <hannah_farrimond@y...>

> > Date: 2004/12/28 Tue PM 04:14:34 EST

> > Plagiocephaly

> > Subject: Re: Comforting Article

>

> >Good luck with making your way through this all- I'm also a

> >psychologist and am used to reading this type of material.

> >Personally I think there is not enough good research at

>present

> >to make a judgement based on the evidence and that the few

> >papers that have been produced don't seem to say the same

> >things at all (even the baselines are so different you >wonder

> >what on earth they are studying). I think on this one you >may

have

> >to go with a wait and see and a bit of daddy instinct thrown

>in.

>

> >Take care- keep us updated on your thoughts!

> >Hannah (mum to Lucia, London, UK)

> >Cranio grad

>

> Unfortunately that's been my impression too from the limited

amount of medline searching I've been able to do so far. I

haven't been able to find the type of info I was hoping to find. I do

want to ask my pediatrician what her experience has been (kids

she's seen for many years). Although we may end up getting a

helmet if needed, I'm skeptical about getting info from a helmet

manufacturer, because they (naturally)probably are not

disinterested. I'd rather rely on my own observations of

progress, what I can find in peer-reviewed journals, and the

experiences of others.

>

> Rick