The distinction here is between a count, and an estimate. The CDC figure is a count. Because we are counting, we should consider the values as a fairly accurate underestimate of the true number. I can argue with you all day over the specific size of the uncounted portion (given that over 600k people are reported to be missing, let alone unreported missing people, I would not discount the contribution of that), but it scarcely matters to the point I am trying to make.
In comparison, the adverse drug reactions is an estimate. It's based on a very small number of experiments, that the researchers have extrapolated out. And yes, with an estimate, and indeed, it's possible that the number of overall adverse drug reactions is far higher than 108k (Or 106k). This is not dishonest.
What is dishonest is to put the two in the same table and pretend they come from the same source. This is not comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing fruit pastiles to orchards. If we want a fair comparison, we must compare the gun deaths numbers to the drugs deaths, looking at values made *using the same, fair, methodology*.
The significance that 'accidental poisonings' consists of both legal and illegal drugs is that we affirm that poisonings, as counted by the CDC, is a *superset of adverse prescription drug reactions*. In other words, even if nobody died from illegal drugs or any other type of poisoning, the CDC estimate of adverse drug effects must be some value less than 31k. The quoted estimate, which we have already accepted to be inaccurate, is fundamentally inconsistent with the CDC estimate.
You don't understand how gun control is supposed to work.
Let's stay away from the political question of whether it does. Here's the theory:
Gun control -> - fewer guns in general circulation - fewers guns go from legal to illegal - illegal gun owners are more incentivised to keep their guns more securely and use them more sparingly (if they are criminals). (Sidenote: an illegal black market in guns exists in the UK, for example, but because individual guns can often be traced to their dealer or workshop, criminals themselves therefore very carefully control who they deal with to avoid attracting attention. This prices small timers out of guns, and incentivises criminals to use fake guns instead of real ones.)
Therefore would be perpertrators will find it harder to procure guns. Specifically: - illegal guns provides an additional check at which criminals can be detected and arrested before they strike (For example, sting operations, informants amongst the criminal community, etc) - illegal guns takes more time to procure. Because most murders are relatively spontaneous, this gives the would-be killer time to change his mind, or be picked up by the system. - there's a smaller likelihood of the criminal already having a gun when the motivation strikes. Like in a fight, if you are empty handed, you throw a punch. If you have a gun already in your hand, then what do you do?
Removing guns is good because: - Guns are much more lethal than knives or other weapons, in aggregate - Guns benefit greatly from the element of surprise, which makes them more difficult for the victim to defend against - Reducing gun prevalence in the long term opens the way for law enforcement to be also disarmed, or at least, not use lethal force as their first recourse.
Greece should really be a poster child for how austerity *DOESN'T WORK*. Greece has tried year after year to cut its debt by cutting spending, but doing so has only sent it into a worse and worse recession that has seen tax revenues shrink. Result? Mass unemployment and social disorder of the likes not seen since the end of Weimar Germany, and financially absolutely ZERO progress.
And no, the greeks are not, in fact, lazy. Prior to this crisis, they were working many more hours than Germany. The problem is that greek industries just aren't the sectors that make a lot of profit.
If your argument is that a few parts of Europe are performing better than the US by random chance, then you would expect to see the US solidly in the middle of the chart. As it were, the US is either the 17th, or the 16th of the 17 countries studied, and the one beneath it is usually a small country (e.g. Finland, for accidents). These guys did not pick the healthiest parts of Europe, they picked major countries like Germany, France, the UK.... If they compared the average of Europe to the US, Europe would still be substantially better.
I'm undoing all my moderation to post this, but we need to do something about this.
"Recently, Lazarou, Pomeranz, and Corey attempted to synthesize available data on fatalities from adverse drug events (excluding cases of medication error). To derive their estimate of 106,000 fatal adverse drug reactions in the United States in 1994, they drew on data from 16 studies of adverse drug reactions published between 1964 and 1995. The studies cumulatively looked at 78 deaths, but only two of the studies had more than 10 deaths. Moreover, the 4 studies published after 1976 included a total of 5 deaths, compared with 73 in the 12 earlier studies. Consequently, the projection of fatal adverse drug reactions in 1994 is based predominately on data from 20 years earlier, when the use of pharmaceuticals was quite different. In addition, deaths were too few to arrive at a stable mortality estimate -- as even a small change in the number of deaths reported in the studies would lead to substantial changes in the number of deaths extrapolated to the national population".
Gun deaths and accidental poisonings are based on the CDC's own counts and therefore potentially underestimate the figure because of unrecorded deaths. 'Adverse effects to drugs' is based on massive extrapolation from outdated data. One fact that should have immediately rung alarm bells for you is that the CDC's definition for 'accidental poisoning' *includes* both illegal and legal drug reactions. The OP is wrong, wrong, wrong.
In other words, capitalism. If there's an opportunity to make money, and you don't put into place methods to stop it, why on earth would you expect them not to take advantage? The goodness of their heart?
People seem to think that China is some sort of charity. If people want to talk of global monopolization, then you should consider things like farm subsidies. Cheap rare earth materials may have enabled China to grow its production industry at the expense of certain rich countries in the past (and I'd say that current changes actually represent a *restoration* of the natural order of things) but present agricultural subsidies are basically killing people in poor countries *right now*. I'd be all in favour of a fair, balanced and international system of setting regulations, pricing, and subsidies, but moaning only when it turns against you is just simple whining.
Well, Hayabusa was a specific asteroid probe sent on a seven year mission to an asteroid in its orbit. Chang'E 2 was a lunar orbital probe launched in 2010 that was redirected from its parking orbit in April to approach Toutatis at the last minute when the asteroid happened to come close to Earth. The two are very different types of missions.
This is actually done in many countries. When I went to Beijing, all the traffic lights had basically progress bars to indicate time until the next light change. It's really fantastically helpful, and should be used more widely.
Research data has to be shared for the sake of peer review. But the main problem I see with totally public access is that the public aren't ready for it. In a public arena where people jump on evolutionists for using the word 'theory', or pull all sorts of quotes out of context from leaked climate research emails, publication will just lead to a massive and distracting shitstorm that all scientists want to avoid.
It's fine to ask scientists to show their working, but what's usually being asked in these cases is for scientists to expose all the minutiae of their thinking, their process of coming up with hypotheses, and so on, most of which is irrelevant to the final produce of Evidence->Conclusion. And really, no one can work in such an environment where you have to guard all your words and thoughts carefully lest someone picks it out at some later date. It would be a hugely oppressive work environment, subjected to a group of people who are generally kinda private individuals. Even the Soviet Union understood that they need to afford these people a little privacy.
Hmm, that's an interesting question to ask in terms of a general principle. For the specific case of helmets, I agree. But generally, should the government legislate in favour of protecting people themselves? That's an interesting issue.
Let's ignore the issue of secondary effects from individual harm. (e.g. healthcare costs, costs to welfare of friends and relatives and dependents, costs to economy of you not going to work, yadda yadd)
Thinking aloud about this, the fact is, having it be against the law to do a certain thing, even if the law isn't rigorously enforced, has a strong persuasive effect. People that may not be necessarily *opposed* to a certain action, but decline to do it out of disinterest or ignorance, seem generally to be motivated by a law in a way that any sort of public information campaign, or media campaign just isn't. Legal sanction is obviously a very blunt instrument, and frequently excessive, but as a matter of principle if you, as a legislator, know that instituting X law is going to save N lives at the end of the day, then, shouldn't legislating this be the moral thing to do, intrusion into freedom be damned? Indirectly, governments do this with safety standards all the time - we basically remove the right of people to buy unsafe (but probably cheaper) products, for their own good. We also generally directly prevent the sale of, e.g. cigarettes to under 18s, even though there's basically no evidence showing a 17 year old is substantially more irrational and irresponsible than a 19 year old. Is that so wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
So by that argument, you should be ignored?
The report goes to several lengths to account for wealth, ethnic background, age distribution, gender mix, etc. Your blase comparison does not.
Read better.
The distinction here is between a count, and an estimate. The CDC figure is a count. Because we are counting, we should consider the values as a fairly accurate underestimate of the true number. I can argue with you all day over the specific size of the uncounted portion (given that over 600k people are reported to be missing, let alone unreported missing people, I would not discount the contribution of that), but it scarcely matters to the point I am trying to make.
In comparison, the adverse drug reactions is an estimate. It's based on a very small number of experiments, that the researchers have extrapolated out. And yes, with an estimate, and indeed, it's possible that the number of overall adverse drug reactions is far higher than 108k (Or 106k). This is not dishonest.
What is dishonest is to put the two in the same table and pretend they come from the same source. This is not comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing fruit pastiles to orchards. If we want a fair comparison, we must compare the gun deaths numbers to the drugs deaths, looking at values made *using the same, fair, methodology*.
The significance that 'accidental poisonings' consists of both legal and illegal drugs is that we affirm that poisonings, as counted by the CDC, is a *superset of adverse prescription drug reactions*. In other words, even if nobody died from illegal drugs or any other type of poisoning, the CDC estimate of adverse drug effects must be some value less than 31k. The quoted estimate, which we have already accepted to be inaccurate, is fundamentally inconsistent with the CDC estimate.
The values considered are age-adjusted.
You don't understand how gun control is supposed to work.
Let's stay away from the political question of whether it does. Here's the theory:
Gun control ->
- fewer guns in general circulation
- fewers guns go from legal to illegal
- illegal gun owners are more incentivised to keep their guns more securely and use them more sparingly (if they are criminals). (Sidenote: an illegal black market in guns exists in the UK, for example, but because individual guns can often be traced to their dealer or workshop, criminals themselves therefore very carefully control who they deal with to avoid attracting attention. This prices small timers out of guns, and incentivises criminals to use fake guns instead of real ones.)
Therefore would be perpertrators will find it harder to procure guns. Specifically:
- illegal guns provides an additional check at which criminals can be detected and arrested before they strike (For example, sting operations, informants amongst the criminal community, etc)
- illegal guns takes more time to procure. Because most murders are relatively spontaneous, this gives the would-be killer time to change his mind, or be picked up by the system.
- there's a smaller likelihood of the criminal already having a gun when the motivation strikes. Like in a fight, if you are empty handed, you throw a punch. If you have a gun already in your hand, then what do you do?
Removing guns is good because:
- Guns are much more lethal than knives or other weapons, in aggregate
- Guns benefit greatly from the element of surprise, which makes them more difficult for the victim to defend against
- Reducing gun prevalence in the long term opens the way for law enforcement to be also disarmed, or at least, not use lethal force as their first recourse.
Greece should really be a poster child for how austerity *DOESN'T WORK*. Greece has tried year after year to cut its debt by cutting spending, but doing so has only sent it into a worse and worse recession that has seen tax revenues shrink. Result? Mass unemployment and social disorder of the likes not seen since the end of Weimar Germany, and financially absolutely ZERO progress.
And no, the greeks are not, in fact, lazy. Prior to this crisis, they were working many more hours than Germany. The problem is that greek industries just aren't the sectors that make a lot of profit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17155304
If your argument is that a few parts of Europe are performing better than the US by random chance, then you would expect to see the US solidly in the middle of the chart. As it were, the US is either the 17th, or the 16th of the 17 countries studied, and the one beneath it is usually a small country (e.g. Finland, for accidents). These guys did not pick the healthiest parts of Europe, they picked major countries like Germany, France, the UK.... If they compared the average of Europe to the US, Europe would still be substantially better.
If my previous comment is insufficiently clear, MOD PARENT DOWN. It's bad statistics.
Yeah, basically he's saying he doesn't understand what 'division' is.
In other words, muggers are the most productive people of all? Good to hear.
I'm undoing all my moderation to post this, but we need to do something about this.
Gun deaths and accidental poisonings are based on the CDC's own counts and therefore potentially underestimate the figure because of unrecorded deaths. 'Adverse effects to drugs' is based on massive extrapolation from outdated data. One fact that should have immediately rung alarm bells for you is that the CDC's definition for 'accidental poisoning' *includes* both illegal and legal drug reactions. The OP is wrong, wrong, wrong.
In other words, capitalism. If there's an opportunity to make money, and you don't put into place methods to stop it, why on earth would you expect them not to take advantage? The goodness of their heart?
People seem to think that China is some sort of charity. If people want to talk of global monopolization, then you should consider things like farm subsidies. Cheap rare earth materials may have enabled China to grow its production industry at the expense of certain rich countries in the past (and I'd say that current changes actually represent a *restoration* of the natural order of things) but present agricultural subsidies are basically killing people in poor countries *right now*. I'd be all in favour of a fair, balanced and international system of setting regulations, pricing, and subsidies, but moaning only when it turns against you is just simple whining.
Well, Hayabusa was a specific asteroid probe sent on a seven year mission to an asteroid in its orbit. Chang'E 2 was a lunar orbital probe launched in 2010 that was redirected from its parking orbit in April to approach Toutatis at the last minute when the asteroid happened to come close to Earth. The two are very different types of missions.
Banning the police from using guns would be a good idea in the long term, and would be much easier if the public doesn't have them.
Are you arguing that this isn't 'stuff that matters'?
The Dems also represent groups like Google, who have the opposite position.
This is actually done in many countries. When I went to Beijing, all the traffic lights had basically progress bars to indicate time until the next light change. It's really fantastically helpful, and should be used more widely.
Well, the explanation could well be that errors usually don't warrant a retraction, but rather another paper rebutting the original.
Media only reports scientist 1's emails. Lie circulates for years.
We do mandate regulations on building construction and the placement of trees, though.
Or worse, refuse to even consider possibilities that might appear politicially incorrect.
If it's paid for by my petrol purchases, I have a right to see it.
I don't see Exxon-Mobile or BP divulging *their* corporate emails any time soon.
"And if it can't withstand daylight - it's suspect."
Says the anonymous coward.
Research data has to be shared for the sake of peer review. But the main problem I see with totally public access is that the public aren't ready for it. In a public arena where people jump on evolutionists for using the word 'theory', or pull all sorts of quotes out of context from leaked climate research emails, publication will just lead to a massive and distracting shitstorm that all scientists want to avoid.
It's fine to ask scientists to show their working, but what's usually being asked in these cases is for scientists to expose all the minutiae of their thinking, their process of coming up with hypotheses, and so on, most of which is irrelevant to the final produce of Evidence->Conclusion. And really, no one can work in such an environment where you have to guard all your words and thoughts carefully lest someone picks it out at some later date. It would be a hugely oppressive work environment, subjected to a group of people who are generally kinda private individuals. Even the Soviet Union understood that they need to afford these people a little privacy.
Hmm, that's an interesting question to ask in terms of a general principle. For the specific case of helmets, I agree. But generally, should the government legislate in favour of protecting people themselves? That's an interesting issue.
Let's ignore the issue of secondary effects from individual harm. (e.g. healthcare costs, costs to welfare of friends and relatives and dependents, costs to economy of you not going to work, yadda yadd)
Thinking aloud about this, the fact is, having it be against the law to do a certain thing, even if the law isn't rigorously enforced, has a strong persuasive effect. People that may not be necessarily *opposed* to a certain action, but decline to do it out of disinterest or ignorance, seem generally to be motivated by a law in a way that any sort of public information campaign, or media campaign just isn't. Legal sanction is obviously a very blunt instrument, and frequently excessive, but as a matter of principle if you, as a legislator, know that instituting X law is going to save N lives at the end of the day, then, shouldn't legislating this be the moral thing to do, intrusion into freedom be damned? Indirectly, governments do this with safety standards all the time - we basically remove the right of people to buy unsafe (but probably cheaper) products, for their own good. We also generally directly prevent the sale of, e.g. cigarettes to under 18s, even though there's basically no evidence showing a 17 year old is substantially more irrational and irresponsible than a 19 year old. Is that so wrong?