Bonneville America Forums Forums Rider Safety Forums Legislation Helmet laws

Regarding Helmet Laws:

I have been a registered nurse now for 8 years. Of those 8 years I have worked mostly in various intesive care units. This includes neurosurgical units. I wish everyone could see firsthand what a head injury patient looks like. Trust me, you would wear you friggin' helmet every time you went out. You would also see how terribly families suffer when their loved one was just too cool to wear a helmet.

I don't think the smoking thing is a great comparison... But it is certainly one of those things that tons of studies have been done on, and as we all know studies are inherently flawed in that they only use a sample of the population. Trust me, if you have asthma, you don't need a study to tell you second hand smoke is bad... Not to mention the smell! Yuck.

When I see them I'll ask them. They told me at the time but I've long since spaced it. I remember it had to do with being considerably less rigorous than usually required to make a causality claim. Here is a link one of the guys steered me to. He works for a health insurance company so he keeps a VERY low profile on this issue
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/index.html

i am notmeaning just health wise, i for one cannot stand a smoke cloud around be, especially if i am walking behind someone smoking and more so in a restaurant

Frank

If you expose one's lungs to smoke, whether burning metal, wood, petroleum, coal, tobacco(from either end of a cigarette),etc. for an extended amount of time CAN harm your lungs.Not all smokers get lung disease and not all with lung disease were smokers. You can find a study with stats to back up either side of any issue. Personally I applaud any law that limits my exposure to second hand smoke simply because it gives me a headache, bothers my eyes, ruins my appetite, and makes my clothes smell bad. It can be argued that second hand smoke doesn't kill people but I think a large percentage of our society would agree that it does adversley affect us. what happened to Re:helmet laws

OK, back on track--I wonder why more people don't get pulled over for wearing those plastic novelty helmets. You can spot one a mile away...Or maybe they do?...I don't know anyone who wears them so I wouldn't know. Anyone have any experiences/stories?

I left a message on his voicemail. He works at Blue Cross where he does research of some kind. Risk analysis of some kind I think. Last time I saw him was at a cigar smoker last fall. We discussed second hand smoke and statistics over stogies and beer while watching scantily clad young ladies. The next day he emailed me that link.

Statistics aren't so much the problem as the conclusions drawn from them

I'm still waiting for my statistician to get back to me. My exposure to the science of statistics was a long time ago back in grad school. I took two classes and did well in both but haven't really used it much since. The main thing I learned was to be very suspicious of statistics, especially when the user has an ax to grind. The same goes for computer models and simulations. "Researchers" cherrypick data and build their own assumptions into their work. That's why having a professional statistian look at the methodology of a report often shows that it is propaganda rather than science. As for the party, it was a private party of some 200, mostly Shriners with invited guests.

If there is an accepted standard that is routinely enforced in an area of study (i.e. statistics) then relaxing that standard just because the subject is politically sensitive ((i.e.: second hand smoke) is an act of political activism not scientific objectivity. To decide whether or not it is proper to do so, just reverse the characters. Imagine the uproar if RJ Reynolds used a relaxed standard of evidence to prove smoking was less dangerous than publicly thought. Far too often the ends justify the means if the ends are politically correct. The anti-smoking crowd would not have problems with their credibility if they used commonly accepted methodology. The same with certain other popular causes. I don't think anyone has declared second hand smoke safe, but they have said that according to commonly accepted statistical methods the claims that it is dangerous have not yet been proven to the extent some activists have claimed. I think the various claims about helmet use need to be subjected to the same rigorous standards required in other fields. (See, I got helmets back in there )

I still think the biggest problem is the conclusions drawn. Just because someone proves something isn't bad, doesn't mean it IS good. See? Also, I think uncofrtunately a lot of times the real scientists/statisticians aren't the ones turning the good study into the conclusions. Someone hires someone else to compile everything, then they use it however they see fit.

Walt, Larry, I am really enjoying this debate. Perhaps the Legislation forum is not so 'esoteric' after all?

And they seem to be more civil here too I like it. It's ok if nothing happens for a few days here, at least when it does happen it is for a good reason.

OK , here I go again!
In standard statistical hypothesis testing, to be considered "statistically significant" results need to fall within either a 95% or a 90% confidence interval (CI). What that means is that the likelihood of achieving the same results merely by chance is either 5% (100% -95%) or 10% (100% - 90%), respectively. By convention those are the only CI's used and whichever one is selected is always specified. A paper would never appear in a reputable journal if it wasn't. Both standards are very conservative. No reputable scientist would seriously fault a study for using 90% rather than 95%, especially since it largely depends on sample size. A former professor of mine explained all this to us using baseball data. When comparing runs scored vs. number of wins for one of the leagues using a common statistical test there was found to be no relationship at all at either of the CI's. Only when data from the other league was added increasing the sample size was a significant relationship found but only at the lesser 90% standard. Let's face it. Anyone can tell you that the more runs you score the better chance you have of winning the game. This is elementary, right? It proves that teams who score more runs tend to win more games. Nope, it doesn't. At least not to the same folks who exploit the naivety of the public by discrediting perfectly good science in order to push their agenda. If you think that folks aren't really that ignorant about science and easy to mislead just remember the OJ Simpson trial when Johnny Cochran convinced a jury that DNA evidence isn't really evidence at all! So they let the friggin' guy go free! What's ironic is that people are condemned to death on waaaaay less evidence than something as irrefutable as DNA. Another irony is that scientists, the people best equipped to defend their discipline from those who would pervert it for their own gains, remain largely silent because the minute they speak up they're accused of bias and pushing their own agenda! Nobody wants to damage their reputation so its dammed if they do, dammed if they don't. Imagine if lobbyists and activists of all kinds, journalists, pundits, Political Action Committee members, environmentalists, industry groups, advocates, lawyers, judges, and of course, politicians had some sort of specified standard to live up to, something even remotely resembling the statistical rigor that science demands of itself? By the way, do helmet laws save lives, or does secondhand smoke cause lung cancer, or does fossil fuel combustion warm the planet? Is their any scientific evidence of any of this? It doesn't matter because an industry rep, or lobbyist with a sexy assistant, a box of cuban cigars, and Super Bowl tickets has much more influence on the legislative process than something as capricious and fickle as science.


Walt

Quote:

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Another irony is that scientists, the people best equipped to defend their discipline from those who would pervert it for their own gains, remain largely silent because the minute they speak up they're accused of bias and pushing their own agenda!

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See scientists are smart

Well said Walt with lots of good points. Funny how it seems like just about every college stats class is basically a professor proving how stats are BS! Same at my school.

I wouldn't go so far as to call them BS, but as far as being able to lie with them, you sure can. Not so much when they're used by professionals but when someone throws out very misleading little statistical tidbits. For instance, "Child victims of gun violence have increased by x% over the past decade." What they're not telling you is that the definition of children had changed from those under 16 to those under 18. Of course there's more "child" victims now, 16-18 year olds comprise most of the nation's gang members!

So as not to be considered getting political, here's another example from the other side of the political fence, "This administration has saved x% more wetlands than the previous administration." Sure, that's true, especially when you change the definition of what's a wetland a month before you made this speech! The truth is under the old definition your administration has allowed the destruction of more wetlands than any other administration is history!

Both of these statements, BTW were made in State of the Union addresses by recent former presidents!

Lies, Dammed Lies, Statistics, Politicians!!!

I hear ya. That is exactly why I hate traffic death statistics. The number of motorists goes up each year too, ya know?

Post deleted by Saltatrix

John Lott is an economist who conducted his infamous gun control metadata analysis while employed at the American Enterprise Institute, a privately funded conservative think tank. He is not an independent, mainstream scientist and his employers, as strong Second Amendment supporters have never funded research intended to support gun control. He's never published his gun study in a peer-reviewed journal but has authored several general audience books about the subject. He has, however, made his data available and others have duplicated his methods albeit with conflicting results. Very understandable too! Data from the social science field are always very sloppy and easy to mislead with. They're gathered practically all from meta-analyses, nothing like relatively clean experimental data. He's a great example of a scientist who should have stuck to science, and not become an advocate. Once he left mainstream science to work for AEI, his reputation in the academic world plunged. He is however selling lots and lots of books.

John Lott is very unpopular with the gun control crowd and has earned their everlasting enmity for demonstrating that almost everything they say is false. Typically they say he is outrageous and claim that his results are biased. What I have yet to see however, is evidence that contradicts his work. His work is available online http://www.johnlott.org/ and he is happy to defend it using real numbers that can be verified. Below is one example of his work being published in a peer reviewed journal http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dmustard/ccw.pdf

I saw him speak a few years ago. He has very little patience for anti-gunners who spout cant and dogma without facts and research to back them up. He reduced one very aggressive gun grabber almost to tears (much to my delight by the way).

Because of his position on the issue he has been subjected to the most intense scrutiny and not everything has been without controversy. On the other hand, those on the other side of the issue report only the most carefully cherry picked statistics and are seldom, if ever, scrutinized in any meaningful way.

Of course his reputation plunged among academics, after all he not only demonstrated that most of the lefts positions on gun control were wrong, he went to work at a CONSERVATIVE think tank for Gods sake. But which conservative university faculty should he have joined? After all, he had come up with data that supported the enemy!

Compared to ANY statistics put out by the gun grabbing crowd John Lott’s work is a paragon of probity and accuracy. If they had an answer to him, other than attacking and slandering him, they would have published it by now. After all, his book came out nine years ago.

I don’t think taking private money biases a researcher any more than taking public money. Those who fund university research are no more pure than those who fund private research. If someone takes money from the Sierra Club, AEI, The American Lung Association, RJ Reynolds, Planned Parenthood, the NRA or Handgun Control (or whatever they’re calling themselves now) I don’t care. As long as their work is fair and accurate. Universities, being what they are these days, lean very hard left and thus there is a lot of pressure to satisfy those who run the place and decide who gets funded and who gets tenure. There are numerous stories of researchers shunned by their colleagues because they doubted Al Gore’s version of climate change, the deleterious effects of second hand smoke or the efficacy of gun control. They’ve been picketed, denounced by the faculty senate, had paint thrown on them or denied tenure. Strangely enough, some of them have left to join the conservative think tanks because they are the only place that will welcome researchers who do not toe the PC party line. The worst examples currently are among climatologists and meteorologists where any questioning of the politically correct dogma will get a scientist written out of the profession. Scientists are being hounded because they dare to use the scientific method and actually test theories against observed facts. There are many examples, but I’m sure you know that. What it boils down to for me is that I think university, government and “Public Interest” research is likely to be at least as biased as that done by conservative think tanks. In fact, I think the greatly increased scrutiny of AEI, Club for Growth, Heritage and NRA studies often makes them superior since any error or oversight, any cute tricks with data or weasel words will be instantly pounced on while those on the other side often get a pass. Do you think, for a moment, that if John Lott had produced a report for Sarah Brady that supported confiscating every firearm in private hands that there would have been problems for him in academia? That any of his data or conclusions would have been questioned on campus?

Utah only has them for Minors. Who here would wear one all the time if they didn't have too?

I would and do. But I do cause it's my choice. Just lucky it happens to jive with the laws too...

Wear mine all the time.
Even when in Utah or Arizona where I don't have to. Even in July.
Ya see, it only has to save you once to be worth it.
And in my case, it has.
Not to mention the saved teeth, eyes etc.
But having said that. It still should be an individual choice.