The Voldemort effect

(Photo: Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort, aka ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named)

‘’The scientific world is that part of human society that has as sharply defined goal to systematically gather knowledge. Science has an own character, which are shown in her methods and convetions. The thus developed scientific knowledge forms a specific reconstruction of a part of reality and is built with the aid of certain scientific methods. […] Science is the organized knowledge of reality. Her ideal is objectivity and universal validity. An ongoing intention to test opinions and hypotheses onto science.’’ (Wikipedia, Dutch) In the scientific world the use of Wikipedia as source is deemed a unscientific way of working. The scientific world, of course, is a real different world, with own laws and rules and, contradiction in terminis, only those who embrace the principle may ignore them. Especially two principles apply to this: objectivity and starting from the norm. A scientist who is going to study anything will start from the norm and from there does some experimenting, adds interventions or influences. the study outcomes are qualitative or quantitative positives or negatives compared to the norm, the normative basis, the null-value. In some scientific niches, for reasons not scientifically researched yet, but may very well have working hypotheses in the ‘’follow the money’’-range, it seems to be rather systematical to not be based on the norm. One of those niches is infant feeding. Based upon medical-scientific, anthropological-scientific and biological-scientific the norm in infant feeding ought to be breastfeeding. Study questions to be answered could have forms like ‘’What is the influence of {breastfeeding substitute} on the normal development of children?’’. Smith & Elliott-Rudde describe a phenomenon that they named the Voldemort Effect. The ‘’F-word’’ (not the one-syllable one) is as ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’ as the devilish wizard in the popular book and film series Harry Potter. The majority of infant feeding research does not start with breastfeeding as norm and they rarely name the substitute, which they do take as the norm, as an exposure increasing health risk in publication titles or abstracts.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetenschap
Smith JP, Dunstone MD, Elliott-Rudder ME:  ‘Voldemort’ and health professional knowledge of breastfeeding – do journal titles and abstracts accurately convey findings on differential health outcomes for formula fed infants? ACERH Working Paper Number 4, 2008