Here's a theory. The parents don't irrationally fear screens on their own, but they are very susceptible to being told to fear them especially by a seemingly cr

Here's a theory. The parents don't irrationally fear screens on their own, but they are very susceptible to being told to fear them especially by a seemingly credible source. Now that they fear them, they are grateful to the organization that warned them. Grateful parents are key to funding. Organizations (and doctors, as you note) have a real incentive to conveying to parents things that parents subsequently find to be valuable, "action item" information. In other words, they are biased toward making themselves seem important. I don't think they necessarily "fudge" the results, but they can certainly avoid going out of their way to think of how such results might be biased toward "useful data".