http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Fri, 24 May 2013 17:03:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5848 Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:59:37 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5848 Oh, actually the whole damn article is Bad Science now I look closer at it.
Are the copy cats suiciding _because_ of the reporting or are the planning on it anyway but are unsure of how (most methods are painful and risky)…. and then someone proves a method so they copy that.
ie. You getting a peak in the stats because they have been shown how, but would have eventually worked it out anyway. Or perhaps tried something that didn’t quite work and totally screwed up their life, but won’t appear as a stat.
Bad Bad Science! Spank!

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5847 Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:54:55 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5847 Yup. That’s Bad Science alright.
Unusual for you Vaughan, usually you pick up on bad science fairly fast. I would probably be worth contemplate what it is about suicide that makes it so hard for people to reason about it objectively.
So in what way is it Bad Science?
The title of the article is…”Long-term follow-up after severe suicide attempt by multiple blunt trauma ”
Well, obviously that not just any sort of suicide, those are jumpers. ie. Preselected for..
* Impulsive (requires no preplanning)
* Urban (requires tall buildings)
* Not (too) afraid of heights. (They actually jumped)
Well, lets move past that on to what else is special about this group… ie. They were so smashed up they were in intensive care, but not so smashed up they died. ie. They have selected for the _maximum_ possible pain, disfigurement and disability short of death. And then you wonder why these guys didn’t try _that_ again! Oo! They suicides, they must be incapable of learning!
Their “Good Outcomes” can be caricatured as “ceased irritating society”. If they thought for a moment they’d realise a “Good Outcome” would be “they liked life and no longer wish they were dead”.
“Predictive variables for an adverse outcome (10 patients, 28%) were found to be a diagnosis of schizophrenia, continued psychiatric treatment and being without employment.”
Predictive? Did they really mean that? Wait a minute, what are they measuring and predicting here. A Good outcome was “good psychosocial ability”. ie. Employable.
And how about that classic line… “continued psychiatric treatment predictive of adverse outcome.” Well we had better stop that stuff then!
And as for that “we might reasonably interpolate – glad to be alive”, that’s way too large a leap to conclude from the data.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5846 Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:22:21 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/copyshop-suicide/#comment-5846 That is important and I wish it would be reported more often. Is there a similar copycat effect with other kinds of reporting, for eg acts of kindness?

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