Originally Posted by
meanwhile
1. Several of your links don't work
Stupid forum code put the semicolon as part of the URL. :-P
2. We've been through these studies before. They're based on two or three "root" studies which are then re-cycle through "meta-analysis". None of them have to stood up to examination by professional statisticians. In one especially bad case the study authors had assumed that the difference in injury rate between two cherry picked groups of children could be ENTIRELY explained by helmets - ie they credited them with preventing torso injuries! In fact, one group was riding on inner city roads without supervision, and another in parks, with adults present to herd them. For another discussion of the errors in some of this work take a look at
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html
No. There are many, many more studies than those.
And cyclehelmets.org is an unreliable advocacy group with an agenda. I'll take AMA or NEJM or similiar published, peer-reviewed research over anything posted at cyclehelmets.org any day.
3. It is literally the case that NONE of the papers you quoted (so far as your bad links allow me to say this) have survived scrutiny by a professional statistician. They are the work of unscientifically qualified activist doctors who go out to prove what they want to believe and distort data through incompetence and enthusiasm. Again, take a look at that link- which is commentary by a professional statistician.
I've gutted the "refutation" of the 1989 Thompson paper from cyclehelmet.org, which seems to be the "refutation" most referred to.
4. One of the 85% benefit studies was based on a factor of 10 error in arithmetic - it is still quoted, however!
ONE, maybe. Once again, you're picking ONE thing and using it to ignore everything else that's independent of that one thing.
And even then that 85% figure is consistent with all the other studies I quoted. Which are independent of that one study, now aren't they?
Look at the graphs I posted.
Conclusion: you're either lazy or deliberately selecting papers that only prove what you want to believe - which on a safety issue is very stupid.
Nope - look at that list of papers I quoted. Some of them did find some cases where helmets didn't appear to help, or didn't appear to help much.
You're glomming onto those few outliers with their very specific circumstances and expanding their findings to cover everything and ignoring all the other studies that completely contradict not only bicycle helmet ability to prevent head injury but also the totality of helmet research.