Pacifier use in the first six months of life has been consistently shown to decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). That most parents don't know this fact was a key finding from a research project supported by the foundation.  Older parents seemed less aware of this than younger ones.  Telling parent in he ED worked and increased pacifier use in infants. There didn't seem to be a downside either. There was no increase in ear infections which has been cited as a worry for parents in this regard.  The article published in PeerJ this month. The link is here   https://peerj.com/articles/309/ and the .pdf can be downloaded here https://peerj.com/articles/309.pdf. This is an open access article on the PeerJ platform we 've enthusiastically blogged about before.

 

There's a few posts in this, how we supported the project which is a model of doing more with less, Peer review, and how scientists sometimes forget that somethings just can't in good conscience be randomized.