She also has an abundance of data, but not enough person-hours to analyze it in a timely fashion. With a sabbatical leave from Calvin, and some help from an Alumni Grant, Shoemaker is able to spend several months working with the W.H.O. team. The research centers around sub-normal child development. But, to determine what is sub-normal, one must define normal and that, Shoemaker says, is problematic. It turns out, though, that that 'growth chart' is what is normal growth for middle-class white children who were bottle fed.
Breast feeding creates a different growth rate.
For comparisons with most U.S. white children, these problems are minor. However, when we start to use that same chart for comparison to children of different races in underdeveloped countries, then major problems arise, both statistically and politically. Those are the variables that the W.H.O. team is trying to sort out in the data from about 30 countries. Shoemaker says that if malnutrition is indeed a major determinant, it becomes a politically sensitive issue. To investigate this, the W.H.O. team will look at each country to see whether there is a significant increase in average height as one moves up the socio-economic scale.