Buck said:Except I have already stated that my opinion is based on my
understanding from my own experience and that of others, therefore I
obviously do listen to others
Well so is mine! /All/ the collected evidence is experience.
Quoted message said:but I choose not to be overly swayed
by the groups that are overly pro or con
Do you think I (or anyone else) actually "chose to be overly swayed"?
Deary me. I was challenged to read the data for myself and challenge my
POV. I took the challenge, found my POV wanting and changed it.
Quoted message said:they can argue each other
blue in the faces and achieve nothing for anyone, so called
"scientific" rhetoric desperately requiring 100% certainties from
people who believe they were saved by a helmet is better served if
the people needing to disprove any hypothesis go ahead and disprove
it, I have no issue with that. But it has not happened
I'm not requiring 100% certainties, you're putting words into my mouth
again. What I say is that if a claim of ~100% certainty is made then it
has to be backed up with pretty watertight arguments if it is to hold
any validity, and in this case it hasn't been. Numbers have been
plucked out of the air and said to be good, but I've seen no evidence
that they are.
Quoted message said:continues is this bleating about 100% certainties, hence the pro
helmet people get more and more credibility as their "evidence", a
dead kid with no helmet, a live one with is more tangible. Or maybe a
dead kid means nothing, unfortunately the bleatings of the anti
helmet or anti compulsory helmet brigade often sounds, in it's
constant regurgitation of that one point to discount the cost of such
things.
Well if you think that's the only point ever made then you haven't been
paying any degree of attention.
To recap, the points that are made centre on:
increases in wearing rates appear to have no effect on serious injury rates;
pro-helmet case control studies have been shown to have wide
methodological flaws and a lack of reproducibility;
the lowest serious head injury rates are coincident with the lowest
wearing rates, despite the accidents they are designed to cope with
being the sort of accident that is quite possible in those places (e.g.,
NL and Denmark);
the specifications do no suggest any expectation of preventing serious
injury and no manufacturer claims it will (AFAICT). Added to this,
there are active reasons to build /down/ to a specification (cost,
ventilation and light weight) rather than up from it. Also, the
manufacturers have helped to drive specifications down.
So, where in the above is "bleating about 100% certainties"? Like
Curtis states, you've missed the point.
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/