Truth

I took LB to the doctor at the PMI the other day for his monthly check-up. The PMI is a kind of 'Ministry of Babies' for the French government. They are there to ensure that you are feeding only purées to your baby, that they are sleeping only in their own bed, and that their first words will be 'Vive la France'. Oh well, one out of three isn't bad.

Normally LB is weighed and measured by a puericultirice (makes raising children sound like you're growing fruit - but anyway), however on that day the two puericultrices were busy on the phone (nice ruse) and so the lovely Dr Fed* had to step in and do the lowly stuff instead. I dumped LB on the scales and announced to anyone who cared to listen that he was 'lourd'. This was both a relative statement, he's obviously not that heavy compared to a fully loaded oil tanker, and an attempt at affectionate humour, but these critical aspects of my statement were totally lost on Dr Fed. She raised her eyebrows quizically at me and stated that we would check his curves, that the curves are the truth, and that they would confirm if he was in fact 'lourd'.

At this point I must explain to my fellow foreigners that 'the curves' are a set of statistical graphs at the back of a child's medical file which state normal healthy weight and length ranges for each month of a child's development. Each time you go to the Ministry of Babies your child's height/weight is plotted against the graph so you can see what is normal and therefore discover how abnormal your child is. I can't be bothered to find out on what data these curves are based, but there will be some associated small print stating when and where the data was collected to create the curves. Anyway, the point is that Dr Fed declared these cuves to be the truth.

Now to some Christians who both think and talk to much, a statement like that would be like blood to a shark, but I didn't take the bait because (i) I'm only a Christian who talks to much and (ii) I suspected that Dr Fed wouldn't really have appreciated a digression into 'What is truth?'
However, in full awareness of my cowardice, I am prepared to write a blog post on the quite farcical notion that some statistically derived scientific findings could be called the truth.

First of all Dr Fed's truth is based on a sample of French children, and what is true for French children is not going to be true for the whole world.
Secondly, scientific findings change. When the time comes for a new study to be carried out with a wider scope and better funding then new results will be published. Will they then become the truth? What happens to the old truth?
Thirdly, we are an evolving species (so science tells us ;-), so how do we know that the current truth is up to date? Maybe babies are bigger this decade?
Fourthly, what about changes in the context? What if babies born today are going to be less well fed in future due to global warming so that we should actually give them less food now to prepare their body chemistry for life on fewer calories?

My current best example of when truth is nothing of the sort, is sterilisation of baby feeding equipment. If you buy a baby bottle from your pharmacy, the instructions will tell you to sterilise. In the public hospital they now tell you not to sterilise, and just to wash. If you read on forums on the Internet, the accepted wisdom is that you should sterilise until 4 months, however I've read a report that says sterilising anything can cause more health problems later in life. So should we sterilise things or not?
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2334984
This paper from 2007 from York University found that 9 scientific studies have been carried out into this question since 1962 and that they all had "methodological weakness". They summarise that there is a lack of good quality evidence to decide one way or the other! So 9 scientific studies have resulted in what exactly? The truth or just more confusion?
What if there was methodological weakness in the statistical analysis of weight and length of children in France?

So, in summary, I think it would be reasonably accurate to describe the curves as "the latest scientific opinion", and that this scientific opinion is a useful guide in judging whether an infant is gaining weight in a consistent way. As for being the truth, well I'd rather have old wives tales any day.

* Name changed to preserve anonymity.