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Study "Proves" Parachutes Ineffective

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 23 2018, @03:55PM   
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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Original Submission

• Re:It's funny, people! (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @01:35AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @01:35AM (#777977)

  To clarify my own post:

  if there really was no effect of the drug on cancer stage both p-values would be equally likely

  This isnt really true since the sampling distribution could be different for some other reason (as suggested by the previous sentence). It is more correct to say "no difference in the populations each sample came from". Also, further reading:
  https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/10613/why-are-p-values-uniformly-distributed-under-the-null-hypothesis [stackexchange.com]

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