To sock or not to sock?

On May 6, 4:58*am, Harry Brogan
wrote:
On Thu, 5 May 2011 08:47:15 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski

wrote:

Why do people keep promoting an ineffective solution to a largely
nonexistent problem?

- Frank Krygowski

I can certainly agree that bicycle head injuries are rare. *I am a
member of the "over-the-handlebars" club and it wasn't a lot of fun
smashing my head against the sidewalk. *Now, just in case, I do wear a
helmet. *Simply because I don't want to end up with a more serious
injury than what I had then.

Thanks for your input, but I'll continue to wear one!!!!! *

And that's fine, Harry. I understand how such a crash could have that
effect on a person.

But isn't it interesting that the number of serious head injuries that
occur inside cars, or while traveling on foot, completely eclipses the
number that occur while bicycling - yet you never hear of motorists or
pedestrians who adopt your tactic?

- Frank Krygowski

On May 5, 9:51*pm, Tºm Shermªn™ °_° ""twshermanREMOVE\"@THI
$southslope.net" wrote:
huge snip
Those were Zionist lies from the very beginning, promoted by 5th
columnists in the US government (e.g. Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Abrams,
Libby), in the lobbying sector (e.g. AIPAC), and in the media (all the
mainstream outlets) in order to have the US fight a war of destruction
on Iraq on behalf of Israel and its goals of regional dominance.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

I thought that was because we wanted control over Iraqi oil, to raise
world oil prices. That seems to have worked pretty good.

On May 6, 10:46*am, Tom Lake wrote:
On Thu, 5 May 2011 21:50:22 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank

Krygowski wrote:
Oh. *Well, _that's_ certainly conclusive!

What have you read on this subject?

Do you mean on the subject of research methodology?

No, on the subject of helmet efficacy. Also on the more fundamental,
related subject: realistically evaluating the risk of serious head
injury while cycling.

I got bored with the silly helmet topic long ago... do as you please.

.... and the fox said "I'm not interested in those grapes anyway.
They're probably sour." - Aesop

- Frank Krygowski

On May 6, 8:26*am, Tom Lake wrote:
On Thu, 5 May 2011 21:48:29 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank



Krygowski wrote:
That's merely a slightly more sophisticated way of saying "statistics
can prove anything." *It's pretending that humans are incapable of
rationally evaluating studies, data and conclusions.

Scuffham and his flip-flops have been discussed here before. *And
while I don't know for sure (although he mailed his first paper on
this topic to me personally), I suspect he got in some professional
trouble by pointing out that an examination of all available hospital
records in his country showed no helmet benefit - only a decades-long
decrease in percent hospitalizations due to head injury, long
predating helmet use. *He did, after all, work for the very agency
that was promoting the all-ages mandatory helmet law. *Can you imagine
publishing a paper that proved your bosses' biggest effort was a sham?

In any case, his subsequent paper saying "Wait, I found a benefit!"
was thoroughly, mathematically rebutted by Robinson, who pointed out
that instead of examining the entire time series data, he simply
picked a tiny selection of data points and removed the time
coefficient that he'd previously discovered. *THAT is cherry picking,
as classic as it gets.

Again, all this has been discussed. *Yes, we can cite the specific
papers. *Perhaps you should do some reading, to catch up. *You might
start he

Statistics certainly *can* show that A causes B; however, that kind of
study can't.

Statistics can (and do) show that ordinary cycling does not impose any
unusual risk of serious head injury, despite propaganda to the
contrary. And statistics can (and do) show that widespread adoption
of bike helmets has not had a beneficial effect on serious head injury
rates. Really, that's all that's needed to adequately understand this
issue.

But if you'd like more, an examination of helmet design and
certification standards, plus some knowledge of physics and
physiology, give good understanding of why bike helmets are likely to
be ineffective.

Bicycle helmets aren't exactly a multi-billion dollar industry. *Heck,
I can show you identical discussions on handgun safety devices.

You persist in trying to change topics. If you really want to discuss
smoking or handgun safety devices, you might start a different thread.

Actually, this topic is starting to bore me. *I can't think of a more
trivial topic on which to spend years and thousands of postings.

Well, we could discuss the psychology of those who:
1) fail to study a topic, yet
2) give advice and solicit debate from those who have studied the
topic, and then
3) say "I'm getting bored" instead of "I have much to learn."

- Frank Krygowski

On Fri, 06 May 2011 14:42:41 +0100, in rec.bicycles.tech Phil W Lee
wrote:

No, but the automotive industry is, and they have every reason to
attempt to shift the blame for the vast death toll onto the victims.
No, his bosses wanted to promote helmets, so they made him cherry pick
some of the data from his original study so that it reversed the
conclusion. He was smart enough to do so in such a way that it could be easily
dismissed as cherry picking by anyone who bothered to study it, thus
managing to avoid trouble with his employers and retain some kind of
integrity. Bugger off then.

So... bicycle helmets are promoted by Japanese auto makers? Over on
the motor racing groups, they say it's an attempt by the ecologists to
kill their sport. The dopers blame the juicers. Personally, I like
the one about the multi-billion dollar Chinese helmet industry
promoting it as an avenue to world domination.

But, I do savor conspiracy theories. I figure I can work 9-11,
Hitler, *and* the Jews into this one. Do you have any more?

On Fri, 6 May 2011 08:54:12 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank
Krygowski wrote:

Statistics can (and do) show that ordinary cycling does not impose any
unusual risk of serious head injury, despite propaganda to the
contrary. And statistics can (and do) show that widespread adoption
of bike helmets has not had a beneficial effect on serious head injury
rates. Really, that's all that's needed to adequately understand this
issue.

But if you'd like more, an examination of helmet design and
certification standards, plus some knowledge of physics and
physiology, give good understanding of why bike helmets are likely to
be ineffective. You persist in trying to change topics. If you really want to discuss
smoking or handgun safety devices, you might start a different thread.
Well, we could discuss the psychology of those who:
1) fail to study a topic, yet
2) give advice and solicit debate from those who have studied the
topic, and then
3) say "I'm getting bored" instead of "I have much to learn."

Frank, "Ordinary cycling does not impose any unusual risk of serious
head injury," is known as a null hypothesis. Actually, "There is no
correlation between ordinary cycling and elevated risk of serious head
injury," would be how I'd phrase it if I planned to publish my
findings; that's called H0. H1 is: "There is a correlation between
ordinary cycling and elevated risk of serious head injury, p0.05."

So, I go gather data... and (not surprising to you, I expect), I fail
to find any correlation, now... and there *will* be a test on this,
Frank, so pay attention... have I shown H0? Have my data and analysis
thereof demonstrated that "ordinary cycling does not impose any
unusual risk of serious head injury"? They have not; what they have
done is failed to reject that which is assumed to be true until shown
otherwise. Juries don't find people "innocent", sir... when they fail
to convict, it's just that.

What you're doing is waving the null hypothesis as a proven fact, but
people do that all of the time. The automotive seat belt debate is
another good example of that. Do you think auto drivers should wear
seat belts?

On Fri, 06 May 2011 14:36:36 +0100, in rec.bicycles.tech Phil W Lee
wrote:

Only if you don't actually understand them.
Once you understand how the studies were performed, it would be
fundamentally dishonest to select only the seriously flawed ones.
No, he later looks at the SAME data, and cherry picks a subset of it
to produce a result which is in line with his employers expectations.
It's called "policy based evidence making". When are you going to start?
An argument is more than rhetoric and assertion, and nothing you've
produced so far actually qualifies as a valid argument.

A valid argument for what? That studies of this type will tend to be
all over the spectrum? Essentially, you take them all and look for a
general trend.

I'm only concerned with Scuffham in that it demonstrates how, when
faced with contradictory findings, people will accept that which they
already believed and dismiss the rest as conspiracy. That happens
every day.

Of course, I haven't *read* Scuffham; I read and criticize research
for a living. If I ever get through the huge pile of it on my desk, I
have a few novels to read... *then* I'll get to it.

Meanwhile, I *must* turn to other tasks, so I'll leave y'all to...
what were we discussing here? I'm having a senior moment.

In article ,
Peter Clinch wrote:

Helmets work great at stuff like bashing tree-branches out of your way
without getting a scratch or bump off-road, but if they generally helped
on the road for A to B cycling then there needs to be a reason why
serious head injury rates fail to decrease as more of them are worn.
"It's counter intuitive" is not actually good enough (even though I
agree that it is indeed counter-intuitive).

Riding to deliberately run one's head into
tree branches is incomprehensible.

--
Michael Press

In article ,
Phil W Lee wrote:

Tom Lake considered Fri, 06 May 2011 07:26:56 -0500 the
perfect time to write:

[...]

Actually, this topic is starting to bore me. I can't think of a more
trivial topic on which to spend years and thousands of postings.

Bugger off then.
You've had your troll.

Wanted to see this again.

--
Michael Press

On 5/6/2011 7:39 AM, Tom Lake falsely quoted due to improper software
programming:
On Thu, 05 May 2011 21:51:16 -0500, in rec.bicycles.tech Tºm Shermªn™
" wrote:

While I wrote the above words, I did *not* write them as one paragraph.
Combining them is therefore false quotation. Please do not do this again.
If foam bicycle hats were effective, why does making previous non-users
wear them (e.g. Australia and New Zealand) fail to reduce the death rate
due to head injuries? That is all the proof a *rational* person needs
to know foam bicycle hats are ineffective beyond bump and scrape protection.
Those were Zionist lies from the very beginning, promoted by 5th
columnists in the US government (e.g. Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Abrams,
Libby), in the lobbying sector (e.g. AIPAC), and in the media (all the
mainstream outlets) in order to have the US fight a war of destruction
on Iraq on behalf of Israel and its goals of regional dominance.

My reader is programmed to strip out existing quoted material and
leave only the current writing to which I reply. When you write your
reply into the body of the previous message, it also deletes empty
lines on either side, so it appears as a single paragraph. If you use
the essay style, then it will leave your paragraphs intact when empty
lines are inside of your text. It deletes my writing, not yours.

You are wrong. Part of my writing is line breaks.

If
your writing depends on mine for its meaning, then you have a problem,
I suppose, but I don't. Get over it; it's a computer thing.

Please desist in this false quotation, as it violates basic standards of
decency in discourse.

I will address your question; however, let's agree on the basics:

Do you agree that quitting smoking is a healthful lifestyle change
that everyone should do?

The early deaths will save on retirement costs.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.