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Study "Proves" Parachutes Ineffective

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 23 2018, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the Science-Interpretation-Guide dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/22/679083038/researchers-show-parachutes-dont-work-but-there-s-a-catch

A study has been done, and the surprising result is that parachutes are no more effective than a backpack in preventing injuries when jumping out of an airplane.

It's "common sense" that parachutes work, so it has been a neglected field of science. This surprising and counter-intuitive result is an excellent example of the importance of doing science.

... or maybe it's a perfect example of how top-line study headlines can be mis-representative, especially when portrayed by the mass-media, and how understanding study scope and methodology is important.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @10:56PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @10:56PM (#777941)

    Ah, the good ol' days when biology was done without any statistics and was mostly qualitative.
    Yes, the days before DNA was discovered to encode genetic information were clearly superior and we have learned nothing of value since./sarcasm

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @11:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @11:15PM (#777944)

    Sorry but you are clearly unfamiliar with the literature. And being "quantitative" isnt about statisitics, its about coming up with a precise prediction. Eg, if the krebs cycle is correct, then molecule x should be found in ratio z to molecule y.

    Statistics can be used to check how good the fit is, but that really isnt that much better than just eyeballing the results and comparing to competing predictions. The main use is to give an illusion of rigour when testing a strawman hypothesis no one actually believes, so Id say wed be better off without stats altogether at this point honestly.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @12:29AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @12:29AM (#777961)

    Or look at this, laws of neural growth from Ramon y Cajal in ~1900. Only today do we have the computational power to simulate the growth, and it works.