3 ms·

Apologies to those who have seen this before: "Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomi

• bavell 7y ago
  This treasure trove contains gems like, "medical interventions based solely on observational data should be carefully scrutinised, and the parachute is no exception." and "The parachute industry has earned billions of dollars for vast multinational corporations whose profits depend on belief in the efficacy of their product."
• SilasX 7y ago
  Yes! And also, I would advocate reading Slate Star Codex's "A Failure, but Not of Prediction"[1] as a follow-up, which sort of resolves the "parachute paradox" of why you should believe in the efficacy of parachutes for skydiving in the absence of RCTs, and when you should require them for a belief. I summarized the heuristic in that discussion [2]. In the case of parachutes, that heuristic would (lead you to) say that, we know (from RCTs) that parachutes slow the fall of objects, we know humans suffer greater injury the faster they hit the ground, and parachutes are inexpensive relative to the potential risk, therefore you should believe they work in the absence of an RCT. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-p... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908365