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Study: Living Near Fracking Correlates With Increased Hospital Visits
New submitter Michael Tiemann writes: An article published in PLOS One finds increased hospital admissions significantly correlate with living in the same zip code as active fracking sites. The data comes from three counties in Pennsylvania, whose zip codes mostly had no fracking sites in 2007 and transitioned to a majority of zip codes with at least one fracking site. While the statistical and medical data are compelling, and speak to a significant correlation, the graphical and informational figures flunk every Tufte test, which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, with open data and Creative Commons licensing, the paper could be rewritten to provide a more compelling explanation about the dangers of fracking to people who live within its vicinity, and perhaps motivate more stringent regulations to protect them from both immediate and long-term harm.
Since there are a lot of things that correlate with location of fracking sites, such as lower income, better chance of hurting oneself on drilling equipment, rural areas, it would lend more credence to the study to list if there were also more hospitalizations in those zip codes compared to other zip codes BEFORE fracking started.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It's probably a reference to Edward Tufte who wrote The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. If you follow the second link and look at some of the charts used, they're not very useful because they completely fail to convey the data in a useful and meaningful way.
Also, I wouldn't call the statistics overly compelling either. They ran enough tests that they were likely to come up with at least one positive result. What they should do is use the few positive results that they've recorded here and verify them by conducting the same experimental procedure in different locations where fracking is also occurring to see if the same results are being seen.
It means that these people are trying to RAM smoke up your arse, but cannot make it look convincing enough even then,
so want help to polish the turd.
They are trying hard to pull a 'correlation is causation' scam, but dont even have the ability to do that it seems.
Perhaps they need to ban Icecream first.
Killer Icecream
The obvious problem here is that there is almost certainly a correlation between these locations and poorer communities,
which also have a very well established correlation with increased health issues.
The scary thing is that this is even being reported. Congratulations Slashdot. It almost but not quite makes it to satire!
They are trying hard to pull a 'correlation is causation' scam
Except that in this case we have an intervention study, as some areas started fracking activity while other did not. Therefore looking at data versus time will tell us something.
And I also not we have explanations for causation. I see two obvious: chemical leaks, and nocebo effect.
I worked in the Bakken oil/gas fields during the first two years of the boom, having grown up in the area.
It wreaks utter havoc on a community. Huge numbers of strangers move in, heavy equipment swarms all over the countryside, traffic goes from light to gridlock, all social and other services are crushed under the load, and the local economy turns upside down. In short, it's very stressful for pretty much everybody. It would not surprise me at all if a boom in local oil/gas development raises stress related problems (like heart attacks and mental health issues.)
But I don't see any evidence (or rational) supporting an assumption that the fracking portion of this larger whirlpool of human activity and chaos is in of itself the cause. The correlation makes sense for less exotic reasons.
Also, receiving a monthly royalty check from the gas company increases your disposable income, and means you can spend more on things like health care.
Note that during that study period sales at McDonalds across the nation were dropping. We thus can conclude that reduced sales at McDonalds leads to higher number of hospital visits.
I bet living near hospitals correlates to more hospital visits too.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Here, I found an entire web site dedicated to helping find these correlations! http://www.tylervigen.com/spur...
one causation is working on a fracking rig. its probably dangerous, and there are probably a lot of new people in the area who were not prior. making hospital visits go up when populations, especially those in dangerous jobs go up
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The two "significant" effects, for cardiology and neurology, are increases of 0.07% and 0.06%, respectively. Not 7% and 6%, but 0.07% and 0.06%. These are the smallest effect sizes you will ever see published. Effect sizes of that tiny size can easily be explained by decisions on which data to use, how to analyze it, etc. Even if those effects were real, those effect sizes are too small to care about. Nothing to see here. Move along.
"...the graphical and informational figures flunk every Tufte test, which is unfortunate" -- Says so much about the author of the post. .06% increase in a data set of this size is compelling? It stinks when the data doesn't fit one's preconceived notions.That's one of the the beauties of science and why healthy scepticism is required.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Active fracking is an activity measured in days. Most of the life of a well is simply pumping...
Or, the economy in the area improves and now more people can afford to get their health problems looked at. Unless specific billing codes are increasing, this is the second most likely explanation. The most likely explanation is that they did a bunch of tests and didn't correct for multiple testing in their stats.
1) An incredibly small population.
Which describes all fracking sites exactly - they are in remote communities.
2) An incredibly dangerous working environment.
No, it does not have to be "incredibly" dangerous. Just MORE dangerous than work in the surrounding area, which if you are in some remote mostly bedroom or farming community is absolutely going to be true for any complex mechanical complex which has frequent shipping and operation. "Hospital visits" is extremely vague and can include something like a small cut which most people would just patch up but which a company has to send to a doctor for examination for legal reasons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly. The oil was found and drilling started in 1895 before their were rich people there. But no fracking on the Beverly Hills Oil Field in 2015, even though 2/3 of the oil underneath will require it.
And that's because the people who live there have the means to prevent it. You will also note that the oil rigs are hidden behind soundproof walls.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Extraction sites tend to be located in under developed rural areas where income levels are lower than in highly populated urban centers. Although there are oil pumps scattered throughout some of the wealthy suburbs of LA that are hidden by clever landscaping. They could discover vast oil and gas fields under any large city but the costs to get at such a resource is astronomical. Energy resource extraction has always been dangerous, dirty, expensive, and controversial. But the fact is even those complaining the loudest against exploiting fossil fuels directly benefit from the oil,,gas, and petroleum products produced. The environment also takes a major hit when extracting the rare earth elements needed for building all of our modern day electronics. Everything from computers, cell phones, and cruise missiles. The toxicity emanating from these mining areas is almost as dangerous as a open nuclear waste landfill. The US closed down almost all of the rare earth element mines because the cost of satisfying the EPA requirements made it cheaper just to buy the rare earth elements mined in foreign countries.
Or, the economy in the area improves and now more people can afford to get their health problems looked at. Unless specific billing codes are increasing, this is the second most likely explanation. The most likely explanation is that they did a bunch of tests and didn't correct for multiple testing in their stats.
Another very likely explanation is that the correlation is cherry-picked. A good way to achieve a study like this is to look for correlations across numerous statistics (e.g. health costs, mortality rate, days of work missed due to illness, etc., etc., it's easy to come up with a dozen proxies for "health"), and if you cast a net wide enough you're statistically guaranteed to find at least one with a correlation that exceeds the standard threshold for statistical significance. The definition of "statistical significance" ensures it. Then you publish that one while discarding the rest.
Moreover, you can achieve this same effect merely by having many research teams tackle aspects of the question. The negative results will go unpublished, or published in obscure journals and receive no mainstream press attention, while the one that "hits" shows up on slashdot, and not even the researchers will believe they've done anything wrong.
Or maybe the correlation is real, in which case we'll eventually find a cause. Time will tell, but it general goes against the sky-is-falling types.
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