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Men are more likely to go missing -- with a fatal outcome -- during a night out in the UK in December than at any other time of year, a new study led by an expert from London's Kingston University has revealed.
Preliminary findings released in the run-up to the festive period show that, of 97 cases recorded between January 2010 and August 2015 more than half the fatal disappearances occurred during winter, with a fifth in December alone. Five men were described as having been on a Christmas party and a further five as going missing on New Year's Eve or in the early hours of 1 January. The perils of waterways were a significant factor in the demise of 86 missing men found dead after last being seen socialising.
The release of the data has led to renewed calls for males to look after friends and colleagues when out celebrating during the Christmas party season -- with a particular focus on taking care when walking home near rivers, canals and docks.
(Score: 1, Troll) by HiThere on Sunday December 27 2015, @07:26PM
97 cases? I doubt that result is statistically reliable. Enough so that I didn't bother to read the article. (The summary didn't even indicat how much more likely, and one would EXPECT some month to be the one "Men are more likely to go missing -- with a fatal outcome".
That said, it's a reasonable result, and I have no reason to distrust it. I just don't think it's a statistically significant result.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 27 2015, @07:45PM
Its just a study of the UK.
of 97 cases recorded between January 2010 and August 2015
How many people can get fatally lost in a country that size after a night out drinking. Its probably not even a sample, but rather the entire population of "lost and found dead after an evening of drinking" cases over a 5 year period. In which cases statistical reliability is a moot point.
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(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday December 27 2015, @09:36PM
Damned right - the UK is so small that it is not significant, statistically, or any other way!
I for one, have gone out drinking more than once in the UK and walked home without getting lost,
sometimes after going to visit people who live the other side of the canal.
This data cannot possibly be valid. Hold on, my whisky glass is empty.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2015, @06:06AM
I don't even live there, but I've gone out drinking in England and in Scotland, and found my way back to the ship without drowning. I hate to kick the Britons, but the whole country is only as large as one of our states. Not sure which one - it's certainly not as large as Texas or Alaska. How CAN you get lost? Almost anywhere you can stand (or fall) in England, you can hear the sound of traffic. If you can hear traffic, you can find a highway, where you can stop some unsuspecting motorist, and ask, "Where the hell am I?"
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday December 28 2015, @01:00AM
Exactly. The population of the UK is about 64m and physically it's rather small compared with the US. The US has over 300m people and is the 3rd largest country by area. There's a ton of places for people to go missing and a ton of people to go missing as well. Each year there's about 600k adults that go missing for one reason or another.
That's everybody that's reported missing in a year, that presumably includes people that were just out of touch, purposefully lost contact as well as people where there was an actual death or criminal action. There's probably also a large number of mentally ill individuals included in the numbers as well.
The article doesn't mention it being a sample, it's highly likely that it's more or less the whole population of people that have disappeared and been located afterwards.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 28 2015, @01:14AM
You forgot the After last being seen celebrating with a few drinks,... further lowering the universe size, to the point where sampling made no sense at all.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 28 2015, @02:58PM
I doubt that result is statistically reliable.
You got troll modded, but I don't think its that bad.
The Green River Killer got between forty and maybe a hundred, weirdly enough nobody can agree.
In Wisconsin, there has been comments and murmuring for over a decade about a serial killer going after a specific ethnic group, age, and gender in Milwaukee and LaCrosse a couple dead per year. Supposedly no foul play and just drunkenness, but regardless of local demographics its always the same subgroup showing up in the river... sure is odd that way. "Normal" bodies with bullet holes and known verified bridge leapers do show up with matching local demographics. Bodies show up in local lakes following normal local demographics. But that river kills a lot of a certain precise demographic almost like clockwork... odd that way. Apparently no body in Wisconsin drinks, other than on the banks of that one special river where the drown, but not any other bodies of water including very nearby ones. Huh. Some subset are probably the usual drunken fools darwin-ing themselves out of the pool, but in addition there's almost certainly someone up to no good, someone who hasn't been caught yet.
Anyway the point I'm making is just one standard issue American serial killer can score as high as all of UK in the study, and on our side of the pond we seem to probably have at least one serial killer going after young men by drowning them in one specific local river, so it seems foolish to rule that whole variety of criminality out of the UK. One killer in the UK, just one, could totally distort and screw up the study data. Subtract one crazy killer in the UK who lost someone in a drunken drowning or WTF the background story is and feels the need to re-enact every winter, and after the subtraction you'd be reading a study that concludes that aside from "the" serial killer, getting drunk increases your safety compared to staying sober and juggling chainsaws or WTF UK boys do for fun.