"Firstly, Aside from the normal anti-car hysteria,"
Where?
There's nothing anti car there.
"My understanding of Paul's statistical work is that it's been based
on publicly available and published data."
Twaddle, look at the link above Smith misrepresents the official data.
Take this for example:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5354&start=0
Smith presents this graph in support of an assertion that the
correlation between an increase in speed camera convictions and
apparent increase in road deaths is evidence that the increase in road
deaths is caused by the the increased speed camera convictions. This
simple post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy of reasoning (with which,
unfortunately, your site is characteristically littered) will be
quickly identified by anyone familiar with errors of reasoning
associated with confusing cause and effect, and of affirmations of the
consequent.
(For anyone not familiar with this type of failure of reasoning, you
should note that it would be possible to employ Paul's reasoning to
'prove' that because death's from Bird Flu will rise after vaccination
is generally administered, the vaccinations have caused the deaths and
that therefore vaccination should be made as unacceptable as drink
driving. In fact, it will be the increase in deaths that prompts the
administration of the vaccine, and while vaccination will be unable to
prevent all deaths, the overall death rate will be lower than if
vaccine is not administered. Same data - entirely different
conclusion. It doesn't prove there is no correlation - it simply says
the correlation has not been proven).
Once those issues have been straightened out, you enter the more
interesting area of establishing peer review in the absence of
comparable research. My concern (and, I suspect yours) is that once
all the simple errors of reasoning have been stripped out, there will
be nothing left to challenge conventional research.
"The argument
that it needs to be peer reviewed is therefore just bollocks, because
anyone can access the same data and peer review it. "
Garbage- look at the link above, five people banned from one single
thread for daring to disagree with Smith! That's not "Open Review"-
that's the actions of a paranoid autocrat who reacts to criticism by
deleting the question and banning the poster!
"Secondly, since when was it necessary to have your work peer
reviewed
before publishing it?"
Since scientific credibility depended on something rather more than "I
say it so it's true!"
"When has Monbiot ever submitted any of the [censored] he writes for factual
peer review before publishing it?"
He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities
of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele
(politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently
visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University.[8]
In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented Monbiot with a United Nations Global
500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. [30] He has also
won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The
Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award
and the OneWorld National Press Award. [8] In 2007, he was given an
honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an Honorary
Fellowship by Cardiff University.
Paul Smith, on the other hand, used to sell computers and refuses to
discuss his academic qualifications, membership of professional
organisations or exams passed.
"And thirdly since when did Monbiot (who famously doesn't own a car)
gain a right to preach about car safety to the 35-million odd of us
who do drive? "
Monbiot does drive, and he's not preaching anything, he's explaining
carefully why Paul Smith's [censored] scared of submitting his beer mat
scribbed to the rigours of academic verification.
Monbiot's succeeded brilliantly , it's doubtful even Smith's barking-
mad cohort of fake coppers and wide-exhaust yobs will stick by him
through this latest humiliation.
For God's sake man, Smith's been predicting that speed cameras are
gonna be scrapped for EIGHT YEARS NOW!
How wrong does he have to be before you realise he's hopelessly out of
his depth?
Look at this:
The ICM Research Ltd poll carried out for the BBC in October 2003
asked:
"Taking all things into account, on balance, would you say you are in
favour of speed cameras or against speed cameras."
Seventy-five per cent responded to say they were in favour; with only
19 per cent were against.
MORI in August 2001 showed that 70 per cent of respondents to a poll
supported the use of speed cameras.
An NOP/Evening Standard poll in summer 2002 found that 84 per cent of
motorists in London and the southern region viewed the use of speed
cameras as a good thing, even though more than half had been
'flashed', or flashed and fined, by one.
A November 2002 You Gov poll by Transport 2000 showed that 75 per cent
of respondents in London thought that cameras should be used more
widely on dangerous roads.
A 2003 study for the Scottish Executive carried out by researchers at
Napier University said that 75 per cent of drivers thought speed
cameras to be a good thing.
The 2003 Used Car Market Report recorded a 62 per cent satisfaction
rating for speed cameras amongst motorists.
Government evidence shows that speed cameras reduce the number of
people killed or seriously injured at camera sites by 35 per cent. The
number of pedestrians killed or seriously injured at camera sites has
fallen by 56 per cent.
According to work done by the independent Transport Research
Laboratory, around one-third of fatal crashes are due to excessive
speed.
For every 1mph reduction in a driver's speed, the chance of being
involved in a crash drops by 5 per cent.
Hitting a pedestrian at 35mph is twice as likely to kill them as
hitting them at 30mph.
A new report in the United States illustrates what happens when you
raise speed limits. The New York Times reported on 24 November 2003
that 22 states that raised speed limits in the late 1990s experienced
1880 more deaths on the road over a period of three years, compared
with those states that did not raise limits.
"Safespeeds" Response -
"Despite official claims that there's huge public support for speed
cameras, we simply don't believe it.
It's almost impossible to visit a pub these days without hearing
someone having a jolly good moan about speed cameras and speed camera
policy. It's high time that the Government admitted that there's a
full scale public revolt not far away."
That's it?
That's what the whole campaign's founded on?
People whining in pubs!!
