Ep.53 Do parachutes prevent injuries and deaths?

Topics:

Are parachutes for life-risking activities or a life-saving tool? Measuring the usefulness of parachutes. The arguments against evidence-based medicine. When and why you only need a small sample size. Why it’s hard to design an experiment to translate to real-world results. Why we need more experiments on events with direct causal mechanisms. Practical takeaways.

Quotes:

“…They hide a few key considerations. One of the big ones is, that it’s not really a choice between at the point you have to jump out of a plane, whether to wear a parachute or not; it’s things like, do we make laws that all planes should carry parachutes just in case?”

“So it’s not just that more research is needed, it’s that more research is almost guaranteed to reverse the result of this bad study.”

“Very often, when it’s come to the practicality of how do we investigate this within an organization, we’ve decided that an experiment is not the best use of our time and resources.”