Imagine these statements in an engineering context:
"Linked lists are bad."
"Java is bad."
"Databases are bad."
As an engineer, those are useless to me for making day-to-day decisions, because they're obviously made with some implicit context, and I need to evaluate them in a probably-different context. There are cases where linked lists are bad, and cases where they are great.
The same thing applies to these parenting generalizations. When some parenting guru or doctor says "x is bad", before we can fit that advice into our lives we have to know: how bad? In what scenarios is it worse, in which scenarios does it not matter, and in which scenarios is it better? What's the context in which they reached that conclusion? Does that context apply to me?
And all of that is just way too much effort for me to evaluate, so those recommendations don't carry much weight to me (they still carry weight, just not much). I trust my observations and my ability to understand my situations better than blanket statements.
This is a classic strawman. Which researcher or medical professional is just saying "formula is bad"? It's obviously more nuanced than that, and letting your child go hungry because you can't breastfeed is obviously not the conclusion to draw. If you have the choice between the two, some researchers would encourage you to choose breast milk. They're not saying you're evil if you're unable to breastfeed.
Will your child be worse off if they're fed with formula instead of breastmilk? There's some evidence showing that this is the case. If you're unable to breastfeed and feel guilt because you have this knowledge, that's not a valid reason to tell these researchers to silence themselves.
The only strawman here is your claiming that I want to silence researchers. Research is one of the most important things we do as humans. I’m not claiming the research is invalid, I’m claiming that the broad overgeneralizations that some people draw from them is invalid, and creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety and encourages parents to focus on the wrong things.
If you need an example of this, read the title of this post.
"Linked lists are bad."
"Java is bad."
"Databases are bad."
As an engineer, those are useless to me for making day-to-day decisions, because they're obviously made with some implicit context, and I need to evaluate them in a probably-different context. There are cases where linked lists are bad, and cases where they are great.
The same thing applies to these parenting generalizations. When some parenting guru or doctor says "x is bad", before we can fit that advice into our lives we have to know: how bad? In what scenarios is it worse, in which scenarios does it not matter, and in which scenarios is it better? What's the context in which they reached that conclusion? Does that context apply to me?
And all of that is just way too much effort for me to evaluate, so those recommendations don't carry much weight to me (they still carry weight, just not much). I trust my observations and my ability to understand my situations better than blanket statements.