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Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

bmj.com

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Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#81

Post by codeulike »

byset wrote: post #20
joker3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also essential to read the first cited article ( https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?ijkey=3b8c1a70a8d2... ) which very much inspired this paper and is also quite a bit funnier.

It's like when someone says something funny, then another person follows up with a witticism that basically repeats the same joke... Like someone makes an inspired pun and some dude immediately exclaims "LITERALLY!"

The point being made by this new paper is actually substantially different to the original 2003 one

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#82

Post by [deleted] »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #13
kalmi10 wrote: post #5

Please fix the title. It's misleading. The linked article in no way claims that "Parachutes prevent death when jumping from aircraft".

Given that it says "randomised trial", it's implied that there would be a control group — a group of people who are sent to die for the sake of an experiment. Given that nobody would ever do this, it's quite obvious that there's some tongue-in-cheek angle to the story. It isn't misleading if you can read between the lines.

[deleted]

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#83

Post by donkeyd »

erikb wrote: post #75
stcredzero wrote: post #21

A coworker of mine once made this proposal. 5 of us would start a company. The company would buy key man insurance for everyone, then go on a company team building trip. On this trip, we'd all skydive, but one of the 5 parachutes would be non-functional...Profit! This coworker of mine soon after left the company by storming out of the meeting room and slamming the door, then took up playing online poker for a living.

I guess that was around 2005? What does he do now?

The crypto boom really took me back to that time. Suddenly everybody was a poker expert and nobody ever spoke about their losses. Friend of mine made 120k lucking out on a tilt and then lost it all before paying any of the required taxes. (In some countries he could deduct the losses, but here he couldn't.)

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#84

Post by jkim1258 »

Must have been a fun IRB approval process. Wish we could also see those applications/disclosures!

>Ethical approval: This research has the ethical approval of the Institutional Review Board of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (protocol no 2018P000441).

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#85

Post by Fomite »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #38
vamos_davai wrote: post #7

Would you indicate this is a satirical article? Half the time I was looking for jump height or understanding if adding parachutes to commercial aircraft that suddenly experienced breakage such as a missile would improve passenger survival.

The fact that this isn't immediately tagged as satirical and requires actually reading the article and fully understanding the context (rather than just reading the headline and making a quick assumption) is pretty much the entire point of the "study" and the authors of it. Marking it as satirical would sabotage the purpose.

Indeed, this is half the point of the BMJ Christmas Issue, which happens every year.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#86

Post by Fomite »

Reason077 wrote: post #14
vamos_davai wrote: post #7

Would you indicate this is a satirical article? Half the time I was looking for jump height or understanding if adding parachutes to commercial aircraft that suddenly experienced breakage such as a missile would improve passenger survival.

There is obviously an element of satire, but are the authors are also trying to make some sort of statement about clinical trials?

Clinical medicine, especially, is often paralyzed by "We don't have an RCT about this particular circumstance therefore we know nothing."

This article is making a comment about that.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#87

Post by Fomite »

EamonnMR wrote: post #52

I wonder if they where gunning for an Ig Nobel Prize. I'm sure they'll be nominated.

They were submitting to the BMJ Christmas Issue, which is an excellent read every year. Usually a bit of satire and humor mixed in with interesting methods.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#88

Post by callalex »

Freeboots wrote: post #68
nostrademons wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine

There's a short term group loaning 'game' in Cambodia called and based on Tontine, which I would guess comes from the French influence. The game is played by groups who agree on a monthly stake. Each month players offer an interest rate they're willing to pay (more like a tax), the highest rate is awarded the collective pot, less the interest which is redistributed to the other 'living' players. Players who have alre…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but how is this different than a pyramid scheme?

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#89

Post by Fomite »

jxramos wrote: post #70

> PArticipation in RAndomized trials Compromised by widely Held beliefs aboUt lack of Treatment Equipoise (PARACHUTE) That has got to be one of the most torturous acronyms I've ever seen. That's a bit of a stretch.

Oh my sweet summer child...

Biomedicine has gone whole hog into torturing acronyms to make useful sounding cohort names.

Re: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft

#90

Post by Fomite »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #16

I know this is a boring response, but I feel like there’s a formalism here to consider why a RCT would be “obvious.” Let’s say you’re going to use some causal model, like a regression adjustment technique. You could for example assign people to the treatment group (receives parachutes) and the control (no parachutes), and then observe who lives and dies, as well as a bunch of potential confounders like altitude, age,…

It's not actually an argument against "duh" RCTs.

It's an argument against clinical medicine being fixated on RCTs as the one-and-only form of evidence that can be taken seriously, even when - as you note - the Bayesian prior for such a situation is extremely high.

This happens more often in the field than many people might think.

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