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Cynthetiq · 12-03-2009, 04:40 AM

because of "the children", "think of the children!"

When I first read this post, I instantly thought of this TED talk given by Steven Levitt on child car-seats.

Steven Levitt on child carseats | Video on TED.com

Quote:

And so, anyway, here I am. It's not a fairy tale. It's a true story about the United States today, and the disease I'm referring to is actually motor vehicle accidents for children. And the free cure is adult seatbelts, and the expensive cure -- the 300-million-dollar-a-year cure -- is child car seats. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is some of the evidence why I believe this to be true: that for children two years old and up there really is no real benefit -- proven benefit -- of car seats, in spite of the incredible energy that has been devoted toward expanding the laws and making it socially-unacceptable to put your children into seatbelts. And then talk about why, what is it that makes that true? And then finally talk a little bit about a third way, about another technology which is probably better than anything we have, but which there hasn't been any enthusiasm for adoption precisely because people are so enamored with the current car seat solution. OK.

So, many times when you try to do research on data, it records complicated stories. It's hard to find in the data -- it doesn't turn out to be the case when you look at seatbelts versus car seats. So the United States keeps a data set of every fatal accident that's happened since 1975. So in every car crash in which at least one person dies, they have information on all of the people. So if you look at that data -- it's right up on the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's website. You can just look at the raw data, and begin to get a sense of the limited amount of evidence that's in favor of car seats for children aged two and up. So here is the data. Here I have, among two- to six-year-olds -- anyone above six, basically no one uses car seats, so you can't compare. 29.3 percent of the children who are unrestrained in a crash in which at least one person dies, themselves die. If you put a child in a car seat, 18.2 percent of the children die. If they're wearing a lap-and-shoulder belt, in this raw data, 19.4 percent die. And interestingly, wearing a lap-only seatbelt, 16.7 percent die. And actually, the theory tells you that the lap-only seatbelt's got to be worse than the lap-and-shoulder belt. And that just reminds you that when you deal with raw data, there are hundreds of confounding variables that may be getting in the way.

They don't think of the logic or the data, they use the emotional response and stick with that.

This is why here we say debate the post not the poster, because when you take the discussion directly to the poster, you're getting emotional about the discussion.

This is what pisses me off about the whole peanut ban. WTF? The data shows that other things really are much worse but again, It may kill my baby, why are you trying to kill my baby??

Quote:

Allergy to peanuts and tree nuts in the general population is, respectively, 0.6 percent and 0.4 percent, with the rate in children under age 18 (0.8 percent and 0.2 percent) slightly different from adults (0.6 percent and 0.5 percent respectively). These two foods are the leading causes of fatal and near fatal food-allergic reactions

In the United States, there are approximately 30,000 episodes of food-induced anaphylaxis, associated with 100 to 200 deaths; most deaths occur in adolescents and young adults.

The 30,000 and the 100 to 200, is ALL food allergies. So for 100 deaths, we've labeled all items "may contain peanuts" or "this product manufactured on machines that also have been used with peanuts" and other sorts of nonsense. Dammit this shit gets my goat.