Healthy Child Development: Rhetoric and Evidence
Offord Centre for Child Studies Symposium 2005

More than 120 scientists and practitioners came together October 7, 2005, to hear the latest information on healthy child development and share ideas on how to work together to improve the life prospects of children both in Canada and elsewhere around the world.

The 2nd annual Offord Centre for Child Studies Symposium, titled “Healthy Child Development: Rhetoric and Evidence”, brought together McMaster University researchers from a broad range of disciplines and front-line workers from children’s hospitals and community agencies throughout Hamilton, Halton, Peel and Niagara. 

The goal, according to Peter Szatmari, Director of the Offord Centre, was to bridge the boundaries between different disciplines and between the researchers and the practitioners, while ensuring everyone remains focused on what is good, evidence-based science as opposed to mere rhetoric. 

He noted that Aristotle defined rhetoric as the art of persuasion by one of three means – reason, emotion or authority – and contrasted it to evidence, which he characterized as being extrinsic to language – in other words, what witnesses saw.

 “Our role as scientists is to draw a line between rhetoric and evidence,” said Dr. Szatmari.  “It’s the only way to ensure that science makes a difference when it comes to the healthy development of children.”

He saw a role for rhetoric, which all scientists are familiar with, and that’s “the persuasive application of evidence to change public policy and, in the long run, clinical practice.”

Dr. Kathleen Merikangas, Senior Investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C., picked up on that theme in her Keynote Address: Genetic Epidemiology: The Interface between Science and Public Policy.

She explained that one of the most important developments of the past decade has been the growing body of evidence that points to the role of family history as an independent risk factor for chronic disease.  This knowledge has radically changed public policy and practice toward prevention and treatment by helping us to identify early signs and risk factors.

A multi-disciplinary approach is key, she added, and she encouraged the Offord Centre to continue its focus on combining science and clinical work.  “The Offord Centre really gets it.  You are the model for the future,” she told participants.

That multi-disciplinary approach was demonstrated in presentations throughout the day by Offord Centre researchers from a variety of disciplines.

Michael Boyle, an epidemiologist, described how he uses Secondary Data Analysis to Understand Population Influences on Child Health in the Developing World.

Harriet MacMillan, a pediatrician and child psychiatrist, reviewed what we know about child maltreatment and intimate partner violence in her presentation, Family Violence: Lessons Learned and Where from Here?

Louis Schmidt, an associate professor of psychology, explored the Neuroscience Revolution in the Study of Developmental Psychopathology as it relates to his work on the study of temperamental shyness and asked, “Is there room for context?”

Dr. Szatmari, a child psychiatrist and expert in autism, discussed the successes and failures of the International Collaboration on the Genetics of Autism, with which he is currently involved.

Some of the most poignant and insightful remarks came from someone who wasn’t even there. David Taylor, Professor Emeritus, Child Psychiatry, University of Manchester, England, spent a year at McMaster University in the late 1970s where he worked closely with Dan Offord, founding director of the Offord Centre for Child Studies.  Unable to attend the Symposium due to last-minute illness, Dr. Taylor’s Remarks and Reminiscences were conveyed to the participants by Dr. Szatmari and they drew into sharp focus why everyone was there.

Child mental health, he said, cannot be addressed solely by “putting a cadre of assorted mental health professionals on to it.  The well-being of children requires a society that values them equally and a political will that enables them to maximize their potential while realizing that we are not equally gifted.”  

He quoted Martii Sirala, who said, “The botanist, the forester, the artist, and the carpenter do not see the same tree”, and said we need to employ all means to look at healthy child development from every perspective.  What’s more, they need to have “a mutual focus and to be able to communicate between themselves and to the outside world, the world that will fund their enterprises if they understand them.”

His remarks furnished excellent evidence for the value of rhetoric.