Upfront, I want to say that I agree with just-about everything that you have written here. I would have upvoted you and move on if it weren't for the lame "plac

Upfront, I want to say that I agree with just-about everything that you have written here. I would have upvoted you and move on if it weren't for the lame "placebo seat" comment. It's beyond me as to how anyone could watch that talk and agree with Mr Levitt's conclusions. He flat out admits that his only sources of his "research" are 1) the DoT NHTSA's FARS [0] and 2) four crash tests that were run by an anonymous test center. I can't think of a better example of a red herring argument. He's basically saying, "Don't bother second guessing my data because I have these videos from a person who will NOT collaborate the results." The FARS data is heavily biased as well. First, it only reports _accidents with fatalities_. It's a completely voluntary survey, it's up to state and local governments to enforce their police jurisdictions to comply. At the time of the video it spanned 30 years of data, 1975-2005. There's incredible amounts car safety improvements in that time frame. I'll defer to an expert here, but air bags and crumble zones will top that lists; I'm sure there have been improvements to seat belts and car seats in that time. Point being, most of that data is irrelevant. And, then his ego shines through when he glorifies economists superiority over "scientists" because economists "look at real world data"; if his opening wasn't awkward wretch inducing already, then that surely should have done it. If you want to be an advocate for Mr. Levitt's ideas proceeding for actual scientific inquiry, have at it. But, don't spread a cockamamie pejorative, like "placebo seat", because you watched a terrible TED talk. I can't help, but feel my response was overkill for having taken offense from two words. I attempted to find some follow up studies based on Levitt's TED talk, but as it should be to nobody's surprise, neither side seems to have taken it seriously (to progress nor retort). The only source that I found which I actually liked is called "What If These TED Talks Were Horribly Wrong?" [1]. In which, Levitt gets top billing, and there is link to a study called "Effectiveness of Child Safety Seats vs Seat Belts in Reducing Risk for Death in Children in Passenger Vehicle Crashes" [2]; it's freely available, but I have yet to read it. [0] U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Fatality Analysis Report System, http://www.nhtsa.gov/FARS http://www.nhtsa.gov/FARS [1] https://theawl.com/what-if-these-ted-talks-were-horribly-unspeakably-wrong-c4b94e2c4824 https://theawl.com/what-if-these-ted-talks-were-horribly-uns... [2] http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=205063 http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=20506...