Talk:Bicycle helmet/Archive 5

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Recent research

Here's one of the latest studies presented at a pediatrics conference, which will soon be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130506095409.htm

Research Supports Laws That Require Bicyclists to Wear Helmets

May 6, 2013 — Bicycle helmets save lives, and their use should be required by law. That's the conclusion of a study to be presented Monday, May 6, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.

Here's an older one from CMAJ:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121015122159.htm

Bicycle Helmets Prevent Fatal Head Injuries, Study Finds

Oct. 15, 2012 — Cyclists who died of a head injury were three times as likely to not be wearing a helmet compared with those who died of other injuries, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). --Nbauman (talk) 15:12, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for advocacy

Recently a number of helmet advocates from Australia have started to frequently edit this page. While pretending to be neutral, most of the edits tend to promote helmets. One typical tactic is to quote a study that appears genuine but is actually misleading. There are plenty of them in Australia, as the government has funded many studies to defend its controversial helmet law. Typically, the studies make bold claims exaggerating the benefits of helmets. However, a close look at the underlying data often reveals that these bold claims are not supported by the underlying data. This lead others to rebut the misleading claims and make counterclaims. Some helmet advocates have also attempted to abuse Wikipedia guidelines to bully skeptics into submission, or to bury the counterclaims in footnotes, resulting in misleading claims being given undue prominence.

Many of those studies can be found in the Time-trend analyses section

A helmet advocate recently promoted an Australian study by adding this:

A 1994 study by Marshall et al. showed that in South Australia, in the 2 years after the helmet law, compared to the 2 years before the helmet law, non-cyclist hospital admissions dropped by 27%. The injury data in the Marshall et al. study also showed that cycling concussion admissions dropped by 54%; and admissions for preventable cyclist injuries other than concussion reduced by 40%.

This turned out to be a biased and misrepresentative description of the actual study. The description of this study was later corrected:

A 1994 study by Marshall et al. compared hospital admissions for 1 year before and after the law, estimating 228 fewer injuries from reduced exposure (fewer cyclists or safer roads), 22 fewer injuries because of changes in hospital admission policies and 37 fewer injuries (4.3% of total cycling injuries) from increased helmet wearing. Comparing 2 years before and after the law suggested reductions of 149 injuries from reduced exposure, 80 from admission policies and 154 (9.7% of total) from helmet wearing. The authors concluded that the best estimate was the average of the 1 and 2-year comparisons, an 18.4% reduction in head injuries (7.5% of total cycling injuries).[44] Census data for Adelaide for 1991 and 1996 had commuter cycling counts of 7186 and 4494 respectively and indicated a 37% reduction in cycling.[45]

What can be concluded about helmets from that? Why mention the study in this article then? Why not remove it as it provides little useful information.

Another misleading study was quoted, leading to the inevitable rebuttals

A 1995 study by Carr et al. found that there was a 40% drop in the proportion of serious and severe (AIS 3/4) cyclist head/brain injury admissions after the introduction of the helmet law in Victoria.[46] Carr et al. also found that there had been a 46% drop in the proportion of serious and severe motor-vehicle involved cyclist hospital admissions. The data in the Carr study also showed that pedestrian head injuries had dropped by 20%, and cyclist non-head injuries had dropped by 25%. Carr et al. noted that there was some evidence that that the introduction of the helmets laws had let to decreases in cycling. [47] [48] [49] After taking into account various factors that could have contributed to the reduction in cyclist casualties (including trends in pedestrian head injuries), Carr et al. concluded that "...the major part of this reduction is attributable to the introduction of the helmet wearing law" and that "...this analysis has confirmed the substantial reductions being made in both the number and severity of bicycle injuries since the introduction of the mandatory helmet wearing law." A 2006 review by Robinson[a] that included the Carr et al.study noted that Carr et al. had reported a 40% reduction in head injuries, and stated that "...the authors could not tell whether the main cause was increased helmet wearing or reduced cycling because of the law. Non-head injuries fell by almost as much as head injuries, suggesting the main mechanism was reduced cycling, with perhaps some benefit from reduced speeding and drink-driving". [5]

A 2005 study by Robinson[a] that included a review of the Finch and Carr studies concluded that after adjusting for a 74% decrease in pedestrian deaths and serious head injuries (DHSI) due to general road safety measures, and a 30% reduction in cyclists due to the helmet law, cyclist DHSI should have fallen to 52% of the pre-law level, but only fell to 57% of the pre-law level. [50] An article by Robinson[a] on the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF) web site shows the declining trends in percent head injury in Western Australia, noting that that the analyses of percent head injury by researchers in Victoria found similar trends but "mistakenly concluded helmets were remarkably effective. They didn’t bother to check that the same trend was evident for pedestrians, so had nothing to do with helmets!".[31]

What is not disclosed is that the study was funded by the Victorian government, who was keen to justify its policy after boasting that it was the "first in the world" to introduce a bicycle helmet law.

Why keep the study claims & counterclaims in this article? This long list of claims and counterclaims leaves most people confused. It is neither useful nor informative to most readers.

Helmet advocates even promoted their own studies, using this description:

A 2011 study by researchers at the University of New South Wales and the Sax Institute using population-based hospital admissions data found an immediate 29% reduction in cycling-related head injuries over and above any reductions in cycling participation immediately after the introduction of mandatory helmet legislation in NSW in 1991.

This fails to disclose that the study was partly funded by a government agency with a vested interest in defending a government policy that was being challenged. One of the study authors, Tim Churches, had been advocating helmets for years before participating in this study. Controversial aspects of the study were not disclosed, notably that the authors have refused to release the data that would enable an independent analysis of its claims. I added the omitted conflicts of interests and used an actual quote from the study to better reflect its content. Tim Churches used bullying tactics ( "Reported to WP authorities" ) to try to squash the disclosure of conflicts of interests. The description of this study has mysteriously disappeared since.

These are not the only examples. There are many more, some already added to this article, many others recently added to the "bicycle helmets in Australia" article.

Should the discussion about the misleading Australian studies and the inevitable counterclaims be in this article, or should it be kept in the "bicycle helmets in Australia" article?

Has this article been made any clearer by these set of claims and counterclaims? Why not remove them?Harvey4931 (talk) 11:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It's very easy to create a non-neutral article by scanning all references and concentrating on those that support a particular point of view. Citing a NSW report that estimates there were 33 fewer cyclist deaths and a total reduction of $47,863,820 in casualty costs isn't too helpful. The same calculation for pedestrians would result in an estimated saving of over 200 pedestrian lives and much higher reductions in casualty costs. Do other editors agree that one-sided reports that don't attempt to split the effect into increased helmet wearing, safer roads and reduced cycling aren't particularly helpful?

The same problems occur when people selectively quote from a report, e.g. the two-year comparison of the Marshall and White study, when the authors recommend using the average of the 1-year and 2-year analyses, and then not mentioning the break-down into reduced exposure and changes in admission policies that were estimated to be substantially larger than the effect of increased helmet wearing. This was noted above by Harvey4931.

I really hope that editors can focus the serious issues with the content (such as those noted above), rather than comparatively trivial issues such as footnotes about membership of the BHRF, including papers that were written before the BHRF was even formed! Dorre (talk) 00:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I support this call for NPOV and readability. This is not the place for long lists of claims and counterclaims. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:50, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

One solution advocated by Tim is to use more cross references to the Bicycle helmets in Australia page. He made a start by replacing the brief summary of the WA cost-benefit analysis (which doesn't support his POV) with a cross reference. To restore the balance I did the same for the Williams study which confounds the effect of safer roads and reduced cycling with any effects of helmet wearing. Personally I think the Willams study is more misleading than helpful, but at least by having a cross reference to the paragraph where both are discussed, we have a shorter article with a more NPOV. Dorre (talk) 22:08, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I will re-iterate: wikipedia, including these Talk pages, is not a place for personal or ad hominem comments about other editors, including speculation, theories, surmises or opinions about what the "POV" of another editor might be. I replaced the content in question with a cross-reference to the same content in a different article not because I hold a particular point of view, as User:Dorre asserts above, but because that particular content had just been added (redundantly) to the article by User:Dorre. Tim C (talk) 06:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Could you please elaborate? Hendrie attempted to separate out the effects of increased helmet wearing from trends for other road users and uses total cycling injuries as a proxy for the amount of cycling. Williams did neither, so doesn't seem particularly informative for a page on bicycle helmets. So why did you consider the addition of a brief description of Hendrie's cost-benefit analysis redundant, but not the similar situation for Williams? Dorre (talk) 08:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure. The sequence of events was: a) I noted the addition of some new text to this article by User:Dorre; b) I recalled that there already was almost identical text in a related article; c) I searched that related article for the nearly identical text, and inserted an anchor template at that point in the related article; d) I returned to this article and replaced the redundant text added by User:Dorre with a cross-reference to essentially the same text in the related article. e) End of editing session. User:Dorre has incorrectly asserted that this was somehow a non-NPOV edit motivated by what s/he surmises to be my personal POV, because I failed to also add a cross-reference and remove other nearby redundant text. I didn't remove the other redundant text because I was entirely focussed on the new redundant text added by User:Dorre. I am sure this article is riddled with redundant text which for which cross-references could be substituted, but nothing can be surmised from my failure to address all of those in the same edit except that my time and energy are finite. Tim C (talk) 08:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

My concerns, expressed several times on the Talk page, are that in a situation where there are 20 papers for and 20 against, Wikipedia misrepresents the truth if it cites 1 for and 5 against. After reading through the many recent additions by one editor, I noted a substantial imbalance. Harvey4931 created this section of the Talk page because the numerous additions create an imbalance and also make the article very difficult to read. The logical approach would be to remove descriptions of dubious studies that don't attempt to separate out the effect of helmets from other factors such as reduced cycling and safer roads. However, without agreement on the talk page, such edits would be undone. So instead I added relevant material to recreate the NPOV expected by Wiki, until agreement can be reached about the more desirable logical approach. In summary, that text I added wasn't redundant (as Tim implies above) but necessary to restore a balanced NPOV. Dorre (talk) 22:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I meant redundant in the sense that the added content was already available in another, related WP article, and could thus be cross-referenced, rather than reproduced, in this article, rather than redundant in the sense of unnecessary or surplus to requirements. Tim C (talk) 22:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

So, any objection if we start removing some of these long descriptions of claims and counterclaims that add little value to this article?Harvey4931 (talk) 03:38, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Several helmet advocates have not engaged in discussions, yet keep adding more studies in the already overwhelming time-trend analysis section. Those additional studies should be removed while we discuss how best to present this. There is no point adding to the confusion. This section is becoming less readable, and more confusing with every set of claims & counterclaims.

Please keep in mind we are writing an article in an encyclopaedia, for the general reader. As such, we need to provide a general overview of the main issue that is clear and concise format. A long list of questionable studies, with claims and counterclaims, is of no interest to the general reader. It is confusing and overwhelming.

Most of the "Time-Trend analysis" section should be removed, except for the first two paragraphs that provide a general overview of the topic. True science is based on repeatable experiments. Such studies are not true science. They are not a controlled experiment; statistics are gathered from observational data. It is impossible to tell whether the observed behavior is due to helmet wearing, or to a confounding variable that may not even be recorded. No causation or scientific measurement about the effectiveness of helmets can be derived from that. To list all those claims, as it they were genuine science is misleading and confusing. This article is not the place for a repository for questionable studies misleading claims and their inevitable counterclaims.Harvey4931 (talk) 08:05, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Unduly equivocal?

As a newcomer to this article curious about the topic, as I read through I was thinking "Ah, so it seems the jury is out - cycle helmets may or may not be advantageous". But then I get to a mention of a Cochrane meta-analysis concluding that helmets do have benefit. Surely this is a solid gold source for biomedical information and its findings should be reflected in the overall tenor of this article. As it is, its conclusions seem unduly qualified by single-author articles questioning its outcome. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 07:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Alex, you are correct in saying that the Cochrane collaboration is a high quality medical research database that usually contains reliable material. However, this particular one was flawed, hence the many criticism it received. There are many aspects that made it flawed, some summarised here http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1069.html What is particular odd is that this review was made by a team of helmet advocates who had done several studies on the subject and were mostly reviewing their own material. Hardly the basis for independent scientific research.Harvey4931 (talk) 10:31, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

To myself, as a longstanding supporter of the Cochrane reviews, their work of their volunteers (it's a lot like Wikipedia, you volunteer to do a Cochrane review) on cycle helmets is a major embarrassment. It's fair to say that their selection of studies was odd even allowing for the lack of randomized controlled trials, and their recommendations went beyond even the evidence they adduced. It's very difficult to comment on Cochrane reviews (basically, you have to convince the author that they've got it wrong) which comes close to removing Cochrane reviews from the scientific process. It's amazingly difficult to convince anyone that they've got anything wrong, especially if their career progression as well as their self-esteem depend on being seen to be right. You will find that on this particular subject there are other reviews of much better quality, though all perhaps now a little dated. Richard Keatinge (talk) 11:01, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The McIntosh et al. 2013 study on rotational acceleration and bicycle helmets

I have restored the reference to this study in the "Rotational Injury" section of the article - someone had removed it and substituted a reference to a another study by McIntosh et al. which deals only with motorcycle helmets. Unfortunately, it seems the publisher has made a mistake and the McIntosh et al. paper and one other paper are missing from the online journal contents (you can see the gap in the page numbers for that issue). The corresponding author is endeavouring to have that corrected, but the paper does exist, I have seen a copy of it. It isn't indexed in PubMed yet either. In the meantime, I will post of a copy of the abstract from the paper here:

ANDREW S. MCINTOSH, ADRIAN LAI and EDGAR SCHILTER. Bicycle Helmets: Head Impact Dynamics in Helmeted and Unhelmeted Oblique Impact Tests. Traffic Injury Prevention (2013) 14, 501–508. online DOI: 10.1080/15389588.2012.727217.

Objective: To assess the factors, including helmet use, that contribute to head linear and angular acceleration in bicycle crash simulation tests.

Method: A series of laboratory tests was undertaken using an oblique impact rig. The impact rig included a drop assembly with a Hybrid III head and neck. The head struck a horizontally moving striker plate. Head linear and angular acceleration and striker plate force were measured. The Head Injury Criterion was derived. The following test parameters were varied: drop height to a maximum of 1.5 m, horizontal speed to a maximum of 25 km/h, helmet/no helmet, impact orientation/location, and restraint adjustment. Additional radial impacts were conducted on the same helmet models for comparison purposes. Descriptive statistics were derived and multiple regression was applied to examine the role of each parameter.

Results: Helmet use was the most significant factor in reducing the magnitude of all outcome variables. Linear acceleration and the Head Injury Criterion were influenced by the drop height, whereas angular acceleration tended to be influenced by the horizontal speed and impact orientation/location. The restraint adjustment influenced the outcome variables, with lower coefficients of variation observed with the tight restraint.

Conclusions: The study reinforces the benefits of wearing a bicycle helmet in a crash. The study also demonstrates that helmets do not increase angular head acceleration. The study assists in establishing the need for an agreed-upon international oblique helmet test as well as the boundary conditions for oblique helmet testing.

Tim C (talk) 22:47, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Time-trend analyses

"A critique by Olivier[4], of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales [55], noted that Clarke's conclusions failed to meet any of the Bradford Hill criteria necessary to establish a causal relationship."

This 'add on' is an opinion view that was posted on the Conversation, no prior contact with the author Colin Clarke, and not subject to peer review, as the original article was. It is used on Wiki to undermine the published article. Replies were posted to the Conversation addressing the points raised. The opinion piece claiming it does not meet a Bradford Hill criteria may have both positive and negative aspects. Jake Olivier own report on NSW states "The results suggest that the initial observed benefit of MHL has been maintained over the ensuing decades." so he is actually involved in producing reports that appear to be supporting MHL. This is not to say he is doing anything wrong, but his negative view of the Clarke report is questionable. Clarke used cyclist and pedestrain annual fatality data, injury data to match survey periods and was accepted as being suitable by the New Zealand Medical Journal. Jake Olivier can access all the data. Adding an opinion from someone who is actively involved in providing pro MHL reports base on his claim, that is questionable, is not providing a NPOV to the article. His view has not been published in the NZMJ as far as I know. Unless good reasons can be provided I intend to remove the above as not being a NPOV.

~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 19:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, could I ask User:Colin at cycling to declare that he has no undisclosed conflict of interest with respect to the paper in question by Coin F. Clarke, and any critique of it? Note that I am not asking User:Colin at cycling to reveal his identity, merely to confirm that he has no undeclared conflict-of-interest relationship to or with the author of the paper in question. WP policy requires editors to declare such conflicts of interest if they exist.

Secondly, although The Conversation is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, it is a non-profit media site established and funded by a consortium of Australian universities to promote discussion of academic research, and has paid, professional editorial oversight. As such, it is as least as valid as a reliable source as many of the other sources cited in this WP article. In addition, the author of the article, Dr Olivier, is an experienced statistician who has conducted published, peer-reviewed research in the field of cycling safety and bicycle helmets, and thus can be regarded as a reliable source with sufficient expertise to critique papers in the topic area.

Thirdly, as you note, The Conversation allows comments on the articles it publishes, and on the same page as the Conversation article in question by Olivier I count four responses by Colin Clarke defending his article and/or its conclusions. In addition, I note that there are several responses to the article, all defending the Clarke paper, by Dorothy L Robinson, an investigator whose work is cited a great many times in this and related WP articles on bicycle helmets. Thus, there was clear right-of-reply in The Conversation article, which appears to have been used.

Fourthly, the fact that the research of Dr Olivier and his colleagues (of whom I am one) has found epidemiological and statistical evidence that helmets and helmet laws are effective in mitigating or reducing head injuries in cyclists does not mean that he (nor his colleagues) are somehow excluded from principled critique of other research or that their articles such as the one in The Conversation should be suppressed from being mentioned and cited in this WP article. Mention and citation of articles by him does not somehow violate NPOV.

Fifthly, it is not necessary for critiques of published papers to appear in the same journal which published them. For example, look at the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation web site at http://www.cyclehelmets.org - it has dozens of critiques of scientific papers which are published only on its own web site, not in the journals which published the papers being critiqued. Are you suggesting that all that material is unsuitable to be cited in this and other WP articles?

For all these reasons, deletion of the mention of the Olivier critique of the NZMJ paper by Colin Clarke is strongly opposed. The only circumstance in which mention of the Olivier critique could be deleted would be if mention and citation of the Clarke NZMJ paper were also removed from the article. Any other course of action violates NPOV principles. Tim C (talk) 20:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Considering about request.

Deleted comments made about Clarke, authors details provided in the NZ article. ~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 12:09, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted the deletion by Tim C of my deletion of this reference. The issue is not whether Oliver has peer-reviewed publications elsewhere. The referenced "study" (as it was referred to) was a comment on a non-peer reviewed web forum. Oliver's critique was itself critiqued by other authors, experts in the field with their own peer-reviewed publications, in the same web forum. The reference did not mention this and so is NPOV editorial being used to counter a claim made in a peer-reviewed journal and hence inappropriate for Wikipedia. If you wish to attempt to expand the reference making it clear the source is non peer-reviewed and was itself critiqued by others of at least similar standing to Oliver then you may try to do this; but would that really be worthwhile (or possible in a NPOV way)? Kiwikiped (talk) 23:08, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Let's hash it out here on the talk page before making any more reverts, please. Remember, you don't have to actually violate WP:3RR to be edit warring, something all three of you two of you have recently been warned about. Please work it out here first and then make your edits. Remember, it's not about being right, it's about building an encyclopedia. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 23:35, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

We were trying to work it out here (see discussion above), until User:Kiwikiped intervened and deleted the references again without engaging with the discussion here (he did so subsequently, after deleting the content yet again). However, I'll now refrain from making further edits to the article with respect to this particular issue and let other editors have their say. I urge User:Kiwikiped and User:Colin at cycling to do the same - that's only fair. Tim C (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for the temporal ordering of my changes; I simply did all three (the comment here and the two undo's) as a group and was viewing the article when I started. I did my original removal without knowing there was a discussion on the issue on the Talk page, I came to the Talk page after reading Tim's reason for undoing my deletion.

My reason to delete stands. If someone wishes to add a reference to the Conversation discussion with the appropriate description along the lines of "the two opposing POVs in this debate had a discussion on a web forum" then feel free. However I don't see any benefit to the article in doing so - there are plenty of web discussions between the two POVs, why highlight this one? I wouldn't say there is any definitive winner in that particular debate, as in many of the similar discussions. The quote was being used to counter(balance) a peer-reviewed paper by omitting that the critique was itself critiqued, that I would argue is clearly inappropriate though I'm sure the intention was not to be so. This is an encyclopaedia article after all, as Wilhelm says. Kiwikiped (talk) 00:35, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the Olivier article in The Conversation (which is not a self-published blog, BTW, it is a professionally edited media site funded by a consortium of Australian universities, although I agree that it is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal - but reliable sources in WP articles are not limited to peer-reviewed scientific papers after all) is criticised by Colin Clarke (the author of the paper being critiqued by Olivier), Dorothy Robinson (BHRF patron), Chris Gillham (BHRF editorial board member) and others in the comments section below the article, at the same URL as the article, but just about every article or paper, including many peer-reviewed scientific papers, attract criticisms or critiques in online comments these days - to use that as a criteria for excluding an article from mention in WP is not supportable for obvious reasons, nor is it necessary or desirable to mention in the text that a critique of a critique was itself critiqued and then defended but that defence was counter-critiqued...and so on, in some infinite regress. The critiques are all there beneath the papers and articles for the interested reader to examine. My own preference is for critiques and counter-critiques of papers and articles, where they appear separately from the original paper or article, to be mentioned in footnotes to the WP article, for the sake of readability. In fact, I did that for a critique and a response to a paper on which I was a co-author, in the Bicycle helmets in Australia article, and I think that such a strategy strikes an effective balance between readability, detail and maintenance of a NPOV. However, if that strategy is to be used, then it must be applied fairly, which means, for example, all of Dorothy Robinson's and Bill Curnow's and the anonymous Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation criticisms of other studies would need to be relegated to footnotes as well. Personally, I'd be happy to see footnotes used for all mentions of critiques, but others have already expressed doubts about such an approach. Tim C (talk) 01:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

BTW, my request still stands for User:Colin at cycling, who made the initial deletion of the Olivier critique of the Colin Clarke paper, to declare that he has no conflict of interest with respect to the paper in question by Colin Clarke. WP policy clearly states that it is OK for WP editors to add references to their own published papers and articles, or make other edits relating to them, but the conflict of interest which such edits necessarily entail must be declared where it is not otherwise obvious. I am therefore requesting that User:Colin at cycling declares that he has no conflict of interest in deleting references to a critique of a paper by Colin Clarke, or if he does have a conflict of interest, to make it known, or if he does not wish to do that, to recuse himself from further involvement in this particular issue. Tim C (talk) 01:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation, but I do know what The Conversation is (I am an academic). I also know that it is for discussion and the content is to my knowledge really only controlled to the extent of keeping it within the bounds of correct etiquette. To suggest that a comment carries extra weight because of being made on The Conversation would be wrong, it is just a discussion forum. Oliver & you have peer-reviewed work in this field supportive of helmet legislation, Dorothy and Colin have peer-reviewed work that is not supportive of helmet legislation, and the exchange on The Conversation is really just what the website is called - a conversation. To present the comments of one-side of a conversation as a reference in an encyclopaedia article to counter(balance) a reference to a peer-reviewed paper simply does not stand up and comes across as distinctly NPOV. Maybe you could try something along the lines of "In a conversation Oliver has disagreed with this peer-reviewed paper, while others such as Robinson and Clarke in the same conversation agreed with it", but that does't really add anything and doesn't sound right either.

And then there is the first reference in the article to this conversation where it is classed as a "study" supportive of helmet legislation. If the conversations of academics are studies then I've been involved in far more studies than I am given credit for - as has every other academic!

What this particular issue has to do with references to BHRF content is unclear. The Conversation is a discussion forum with control over etiquette, the BHRF is a body with an editorial board with control over content; apples and oranges. Whether one or the other is valid to reference in a particular context would appear to be completely independent of whether the other one would be valid in the same context.

Just for a moment imagine a situation where comments on The Conversation where seen as valid counter(balance) to peer-reviewed papers. Every peer-reviewed paper referenced in this article (and every other article) could be followed by "but XYZ disagreed with the results/methodology of this paper in a comment on The Conversation" (if a suitable comment did not currently exist it would not take long to create one). That would be absurd, I'm sure you agree.

In summary the reference as included gives undue weight to a conversation as a counter(balance) to a peer-reviewed paper and comes across as distinctly not NPOV.

[In adding this comment I received a conflict warning that another edit had occurred and I had to merge the two. I hope I've done this correctly, apologies if not and please feel free to fix it up!] Kiwikiped (talk) 02:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• My suggestion would be to change the text so that it doesn't necessarily imply causation, so there's no need to mention Bradford Hill. For example,

An evaluation in 2012 by Clarke compared pedestrian and cyclist safety from 1989 to 2009. Average hours cycled per person reduced by 51% over this period. For pedestrians, fatalities divided by average hours of activity fell from 1.65 to 0.75, compared to a much smaller decline for cyclists (2.05 to 1.83), representing an increase from 1.24 to 2.44 in the risk to cyclists compared to pedestrians. Clarke commented that "...the helmet law has failed in aspects of promoting cycling, safety, health, accident compensation, environmental issues and civil liberties" and that the reduction in cycling since legislation would result in an additional 53 premature deaths per year associated with reduced physical activity.

The injury rates weren't disputed in the Conversation article, only whether the effect was causal. Yet most people would consider the change in injury rates more important, especially current injury rates despite the requirement to wear helmets.

Please comment on whether this would be a satisfactory compromise. Dorre (talk) 02:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not involved in the dispute, but FWIW it looks good to me, Dorre. In general, I prefer a very cautious approach to expressing or implying causality when presenting statistics. I'm glad to see everyone coming here to the talk page and leaving the article alone for a while, and I'm curious to see what Tim, Colin and Kiwikiped think of your proposal. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 02:49, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, but "...the reduction in cycling since legislation would result in an additional 53 premature deaths per year associated with reduced physical activity" implies that the reduction in cycling since helmet legislation is entirely due to helmet legislation, which is precisely the causal implication that Olivier points out can't validly be made. So that's not acceptable. And Olivier's critique still needs to be cited - if the paper is cited, then the published critique of it needs to be cited (either that, or all critiques of all papers need to be removed from the article). We can't have selective mention and citing of published critiques of studies by recognised and qualified researchers in the area - to maintain a NPOV, it is all or nothing. And as I said, I favour relegating mention, summaries of and citation of all such critiques to footnotes, for the sake of readability. They are the main impediment at the moment to a readable article. Tim C (talk) 03:09, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

If Dorre's revised summary of Clarke does not distort the findings, and I see no case that it does, then I have no problem with it. Tim, I am baffled by your insistence that an opinion expressed in a non-reviewed web forum discussion is a "published critique" of the level that can counter(balance) a peer-reviewed paper. And as I said above, in attempting to widen the scope to support your argument you appear to be comparing apples to oranges without valid justification. Kiwikiped (talk) 05:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Dorre's summary is acceptable, but the mention of and reference to the Olivier critique of Clarke's paper still needs to be retained - that is my point. Rewording the description of Clarke's paper does not remove the need to mention and reference Olivier's critique of it. With respect to the Olivier article on The Conversation, which is the subject of this whole discussion after User:Colin at cycling deleted all reference to it, is a full article, subject to full editorial scrutiny. It isn't just a user comment added beneath an article. As I have said, if full articles in The Conversation by recognised researchers are deemed as unreliable sources for the purposes of this WP article, then a great deal of other such references and the text supported by them will also need to be removed, including everything from the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, in order to consistently apply such a policy and retain a NPOV. I do not support such a policy. But is that what you are proposing - that only papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals be mentioned in this article? If not, then no case can be made for removing mention of and reference to the Olivier article in The Conversation, in the context of mention and citation in the article of the Clarke NZMJ paper. At least no case an be made while still maintaining a NPOV. Tim C (talk) 06:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Tim, from The Conversation's web site (emphasis added):

We accept no liability in respect of any material submitted by users and published by us, and we are not responsible for its content and accuracy. The views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named.

To qualify as an "expert" you simply need to register (so we all are, or could be, experts here). The Conversation essentially enforces etiquette and nothing more - there is no real "editorial scrutiny" beyond that. You again try to bring in the BHRF, a body with an editorial board which does take responsibility for what it publishes - apples & oranges.

I don't believe that maintaining a NPOV view is about matching every reference from one POV with a reference from another POV. Surely it is about presenting the body of work of each POV in a balanced way? I'm sure there is no "we don't have anything other than a web forum post to counter this so we must use it so there is balance" imperative. If Clarke's work is so in need of a counter by the other POV have they not published a paper (with at least some editorial review) to that effect that you can reference?

If web forum comments are going to be accepted as equal to peer-reviewed work, and keeping in mind this is a topic which evokes strong reactions, then what is there to prevent each POV represented from posting "critiques" of the other POV's work on The Conversation, referencing those critiques after every reference to the other POV's work, and reducing this article to a farce? Are you really arguing for that? Kiwikiped (talk) 09:53, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

TheConversation is a professionally edited media site funded by a consortium of Australian universities. Whilst the BHRF may have an 'editorial board', there are numerous examples on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Bicycle_Helmet_Research_Foundation of grossly misleading materials on the BHRF website. Approximately 5 editors without any BHRF or 'helmet' affiliations responded to the RFC, they were unanimously of the opinion that the BHRF is not a reliable source (including one comment that the organisation should call itself the Anti Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, a sentiment eerily similar to a comment on a Medical Journal of Australia forum that the BHRF 'is clearly an advocacy website for removal of compulsory bicycle helmet law' http://www.mjainsight.com.au/view?post=chris-rissel-wrong-headed-laws&post_id=8924&cat=comment).

Apart from the failure to meet the 4 Bradford Hill criteria, Olivier identified at least 9 other 'anomalies' with respect to Clarke's paper. Olivier's critique was published on 16 Feb 2012, Clarke has more than a year to defend the issues identified by Olivier, via a rejoinder article that would (also) be subject to TheConversation's editorial review process (ie. review by professionals with relevant qualifications).

Further issues with Clarke's article that were not noted by Olivier, but cast even more doubt over the validity of Clarke's findings include

• Clarke cites a (2010) paper by Tin Tin et al. as showing that the overall travel mode share for cycling declined between 1989 and 2006, but neglects to mention that Tin Tin et al. found that of each hour spent cycling, there were 70% fewer traumatic brain injuries (the major cause of cyclist deaths) than in 1998-91.
• Clarke fails to note that a (1997) study by Scuffham and Langley found that there was a (gradual) 19% reduction the number of cyclists counted in the 2 years prior to the introduction of the helmet legislation in New Zealand
• Clarke fails to note that a (1999) study by Povey et al. noted that there was no evidence of any reduction in cycling in New Zealand as a result of helmet compulsion
• Clarke also fails to note that the (1999) study by Povey et al. found (that after adjusting for changes in exposure), the helmet law reduced cyclist head injuries by between 24 and 32% in crashes with no motor vehicle involvement, and by 20% in crashes with motor vehicle involvementLinda.m.ward (talk) 11:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I'll make this my last comment, this is really going nowhere and others will have to decide the outcome.

There appears to me to be a continued elevation of the status of The Conversation over and above what The Conversation claims for themselves. I see no justification for this. Indeed the detail on the flaws claimed by Oliver and the references to Clarke's opportunity to submit a rejoinder to The Conversation to be "review by professionals with relevant qualifications" suggests that the standing of the web forum The Conversation is seen as greater than that of the NZ Medical Association which peer-reviewed and published Clarke's work. I find this unfathomable given that The Conversation themselves do not make any such claim to superiority but rather are careful to distance themselves from anything other than the etiquette of the exchanges.

There is also repeated recourse to denigrating the BHRF even though neither of the two references under discussion come from there, and the implied similarity between The Conversation and the BHRF seems tenuous at best - not that one is better or worse than the other, but that they are different kinds of entities.

What is clear to me is that the findings in a paper (Clarke) from one POV camp are strongly disagreed with by Tim (self declared to be in the other POV camp) and Linda (on the basis of Oliver's opinion or their own I cannot say) and they believe strongly that the reader needs to be informed of Oliver's web forum "personal opinions" (as per The Conversation's own declaration). Oliver may or may not be correct with his opinions, but he hasn't chosen to publish a peer-reviewed paper to that affect - something which Tim has done multiple times (though at least one self published) for other work he has identified fault with, a difference I note.

So I have read nothing here that has changed the fact that The Conversation is a web forum which carries the personal opinions of individuals subject only to the constraints of etiquette. Therefore the reference to that personal opinion to counter(balance) Clarke is unjustified and not NPOV.

Over to whomever is the jury foreman, my vote is in. Kiwikiped (talk)

I'm sorry, User:Kiwikiped, that you have such a low opinion of The Conversation. However, Colin Clarke, the author of the paper at the centre of this discussion thread, would appear to have a much higher opinion of its worth, judging by the number and length of his contributions to that particular web site: http://theconversation.com/profiles/colin-clarke-1651/activities?filter=all Tim C (talk) 11:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I really wasn't going to add any more, but User:Tim.churches comment above points I think to a fundamental problem with how this process is being undertaken. Hopefully after this violation of my own embargo I'll not be drawn back in. As before by vote is in.

To call an apple an apple is not to have a low opinion of an apple because it isn't an orange. Apples and oranges are different, neither is "better" than the other. I might have the best apple that ever grew, but it is still an apple. If you don't find apples and oranges a suitable analogy, consider university staff coffee rooms. I've sat in university staff coffee rooms all over the world and enjoyed the pleasure of chatting with fellow academics, and sometimes with some of the giants of my field on whose shoulders I stand. I've sat and pondered over difficult research problems. Sometimes those conversations have led to fruitful research and publications. Some of those publications may well be referenced here on Wikipedia, but what of the conversations themselves? Well they are just conversations - non-peer reviewed, and maybe too caffiene-infused on occasions ;-) - I doubt any are on Wikipedia, and I wouldn't expect to find them however great they were. Conversations are conversations and that is not a low opinion it is fact.

Maybe The Conversation is the best ever web forum, the pinnacle of web forum kind, it is still a web forum carrying personal opinions (by The Conversation's own statements). To try to suggest that calling a web forum a web forum is a "low opinion" is frankly bizarre!

Above User:Linda.m.ward joins you by listing "Further issues with Clarke's article that were not noted by Olivier" - i.e. more original research/personal opinion. User:Tim.churches and User:Linda.m.ward I understand that you both feel it is vital to counter Clarke, you clearly feel without that NPOV is being lost, but calling apples oranges is not the way to go about it. Surely if Clarke is so flawed then, especially given how common publishing research finding fault with other research is in this field (both POVs do it), can you not find suitable peer-reviewed research as the counter(balance)? But as I've said before, you shouldn't feel the need to counter(balance) every piece of work by the other POV which is referenced; if the article presents a representative sample of the body of work of each POV sufficiently well then it will be a good NPOV presentation. There is no need for a step-by-step point and counterpoint approach.

This is an encyclopaedia article, you do not counter(balance) peer-reviewed research with personal opinions - the place for that is... The Conversation! Kiwikiped (talk) 04:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Just to try and clear up some issues, 'conflict of interest' seems to cover a range of issues, being the author of a paper seems to count in a minor way, no substantial conflcit of interest exists.

Providing a critique to a published article is of course fine, providing it is reliable.

Conversation article, “Don’t blame mandatory helmets for cyclist deaths in New Zealand”

Nowhere in the article does it blame the deaths of any cyclists for either wearing or not wearing helmets. The title may be inappropriate and possibly confusing.

it states “Clarke does compare data from before and after the helmet laws were introduced. But the data is from 1988 to 1991 (three years before the helmet laws) and 2003 to 2007 (13 years later). Clarke presents no data from around the time the laws were introduced, with the exception of fatalities.”

This may give the impression that a proper research approach was not taken.

It states

“Clarke links a 51% reduction in average hours cycled per person by comparing years 1989 to 1990 with 2006 to 2009. Again, neither period is near the introduction of mandatory helmet laws.”

The NZ paper provides data from the limited national surveys for 89-90, 97-98, 03-06 and 06-09, showing average hours cycled reduced, 40% by 97-98 and by 53% 2003-06, 51% by 2006-09, therefore the above claim is not really correct.

Pedestrian and cyclist fatality data is shows for 21 years, showing a downward trend for both. Travel data on hours walking and cycling were provided from the 4 national surveys. Injury data is provided and matched to hours travel for 3 periods, 88-91, 96-99, 2003-07.

It states

“Clarke makes no attempt to address confounding factors and attributes all declines in cycling rates and increases in cycling fatalities and injuries to the helmet law.”

The NZ paper states

“Fatality comparison, cyclist vs pedestrians (1989–2009)—The fatality data shows a significant reduction for both cyclists and pedestrians over the past two decades.”

The NZ paper mentions changes by some age groups, e.g

“Collins et al reported that 39% of all cyclist fatalities in NZ occurred to those aged 5–14 years for the period 1979/88.8 For the age group 5–17 years they may have traditionally incurred about 45% or more of cyclist fatalities and they had a reduction in cycling of about 75%.” The paper compared cyclists to pedestrians and other road users in various parts so to some extent it does include an element of considering confounders, changing road accident risk levels, changes to age groups of cyclists.

The Jake critique has some points that may be valid but it also may not fully balance the information published and without consulting the author about the approach seems to have misunderstands key aspects. Consequently the conclusions and remarks posted on the Conversation and Wiki tend to mislead readers.

Including the Conversation article tends to lead readers to what appears to be an unreliable article, if it had been reliable, no problem really.

The 53 premature deaths, data is provided in the article and the approach taken to reach the figure. It was part of the findings, some may not like the findings or have their view about the method. This is additional research.

Balancing the issue of a author and trying to avoid the public misundertsanding an issue is a problem.

~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 08:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Colin at cycling, for your opinions on the Olivier critique of the Colin Clarke paper in NZMJ. Just to clarify, are you saying that you do not have any conflict of interest with respect to the Colin Clarke paper and the Olivier critique of it? That is, that you are a disinterested party, with no relationship or connection to Colin Clarke? Obviously if you cannot answer yes (no connection) to this question, then your deletion of Olivier's critique of the Colin Clarke paper, and your opinions about that critique, must be seen in a different light by other WP editors. Tim C (talk) 08:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I note that the latest edits to the article by User:Colin at cycling were to add, as a critique of a 2012 study by Persaud et al, a lengthy summary of an online non-peer-reviewed response to that study by Colin F Clarke. Yet in this thread we are discussing the deletion by User:Colin at cycling of all mention of and reference to an online critique by Olivier of a paper by Colin F Clarke. Does anyone else see a problem here? Tim C (talk) 21:42, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I too see a problem there, and there is also a problem with Colin at cycling

• twice deleting my addition (including a reference) noting that Colin F Clarke is an anti-helmet campaigner
• 'addressing' 1 of the more than 10 issues identified in Olivier's critique, then editorialising that "therefore the critique is unsound"

Colin at cycling should refrain from making any further changes to the article with respect to material pertaining to Colin F Clarke until Colin at cycling has declared whether he has any undisclosed conflict of interest with respect to the paper by Colin F. Clarke, and any critique of it. Linda.m.ward (talk) 07:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to remind everyone of WP:COI, specifically "A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor. COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest.

COI editing is strongly discouraged. It risks causing public embarrassment to the individuals and groups being promoted (see Wikipedia is in the real world), and if it causes disruption to the encyclopedia, accounts may be blocked."

It would certainly be good practice to declare any relevant financial relationships (I think it's probably supererogatory to repeat that I'm on the BHRF board and pay the slight costs of their website) such as sources of funding for research, and also if editors are authors of works being quoted. I'm mindful of the guidance "When investigating COI editing, be careful not to reveal the identity of editors against their wishes. Wikipedia's policy against harassment takes precedence over this guideline." I'd like to disclaim any intention to press any editor to reveal their real-world identity against their will. But I strongly encourage all editors to declare all relevant details as soon as possible. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. My COI declaration is (and has been for some time) here: User:Tim.churches Tim C (talk) 11:27, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, it's very good as a declaration of your professional interest in the subject. It doesn't seem to give any details about sources of funding for this work, a fairly obvious interest. Richard Keatinge (talk) 11:39, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Funding is covered in the last paragraph on that page. Tim C (talk) 12:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

You don't actually say where the funding does come from, but I appreciate that it doesn't come from helmet manufacturers etc. Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

There has been no specific funding for my role in any of these studies - it was done as a (small) part of my normal work. I trust that you will be interrogating other researchers whose work is mentioned or referenced in this and related articles with the same zeal. Tim C (talk) 14:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to re-open this thread, but I have just noticed that Colin Clarke has contributed two comments in the last two days (in addition to many previous ones) to an article about bicycle helmets in The Conversation - see http://theconversation.com/profiles/colin-clarke-1651/activities?filter=comments Given Colin Clarke's willingness to use The Conversation as a vehicle to engage with other people's research on bicycle helmets, I can see no reasonable justification to exclude from this WP article reference to an article in The Conversation by Olivier which engages with Coin Clarke's research. Sauce for the goose etc, as the aphorism goes. And before User:Colin at cycling responds here, I must insist that he declares a lack of conflict of interest with respect to Colin Clarke, or otherwise stay silent on this issue. Tim C (talk) 21:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Repeating the above "Just to try and clear up some issues, 'conflict of interest' seems to cover a range of issues, being the author of a paper seems to count in a minor way, no substantial conflcit of interest exists."

Colin Clarke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article as far as I know.

Tim's assertion is if Colin Clarke comments anywhere that can be included in Wiki on an equal basis to peer review. A little suspect I expect. Kindly focus on the research aspect of the topic if possible and not individuals. ~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 09:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

That is not what was asked. The request was for User:Colin at cycling to declare that he has no conflict of interest with respect to Colin Clarke, the author of a paper published in the NZMJ cited in this article. The reason for asking is that User:Colin at cycling has edited this WP article to remove mention of and reference to an article by Dr Jake Olivier in The Conversation which is a critique of the Colin Clarke NZMJ paper.

I did not assert that if Colin Clarke contributes comments anywhere that that equals peer-review. That is absurd. I pointed out that Colin Clarke clearly regards articles in the Conversation as worthy of his contributed comments, and thus there can be no valid objection from him to an article in The Conversation which critiques his paper being mentioned in this article. Tim C (talk) 02:24, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I have restored the reference to Jake Olivier's critique of the 2012 Colin F Clarke paper on helmet laws in NZ. Arguments that highly relevant articles in The Conversation by respected researchers are not acceptable as reliable sources for WP have no merit. I note also that in the related WP article Bicycle helmets in Australia, User:Colin_at_cycling recently referenced a non-peer-reviewed online comment by Colin F. Clarke which critiqued a peer-reviewed Canadian paper by Persaud et al. If User:Colin_at_cycling regards such an online critique of a paper as a sufficiently reliable source for WP articles, then he can have no objection to citing a critique published in The Conversation - see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bicycle_helmets_in_Australia&diff=554421864&oldid=554104696 Tim C (talk) 04:24, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The reference to the critique by Olivier in The Conversation of the Clarke NZ paper has been removed from the article, again. I have restored it. It is not acceptable to selectively remove critiques of research which are written by leading researchers in the field and published on a professionally edited university-backed media outlet such as The Conversation. Tim C (talk) 22:37, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Using footnotes or generic statements to give undue prominence to misleading claims

In the "bicycle helmets in Australia" talk page, Tim Churches posted this discussion. I have copied it here for convenience, adding the emphasis in bold.

As User:Richard Keatinge has noted, this article has become unencyclopaedic, as more and more details are added. These details are important for the accuracy of the article and to maintain a NPOV, but they make it very hard to read. The typical solution to this, used in scholarly writing for hundreds of years, is the footnote. As an experiment, I have moved some critique of one of Dorothy Robinson's review papers to a footnote, as well as a reference to a magistrate's opinion which had been inserted between the mention of Robinson's paper and the discussion of critiques of it (thus interrupting the flow of the discourse). If there are no objections, I intend to do this throughout the article, as time permits. Others are encouraged to do so too. Note that it must be done fairly and from a NPOV - details of critiques of all papers, no matter what they report, should be given the same footnote treatment, if the discussion is technical or very detailed. But not everything needs to be moved to footnotes - judgement is required. Please make such footnote changes one edit at a time, so that each can be reviewed by other editors and reverted or modified if necessary. Comments? Tim C (talk) 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the district court judge's opinion belongs as a footnote to the Robinson paper. It was delivered in 2010 in response to the material provided by Sue Abbott as part of her legal challenge. The judge was agreeing with Abbott, not Robinson. Given the chronological nature of the rest of that section, I have therefore put it as a separate paragraph commencing with the words "In 2010". Dorre (talk) 22:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I should add that footnotes are inserted using the efn template. Ref tags can be included in the footnotes, so whole chunks of existing page mark-up just need to be cut-and-pasted inside an efn template to move that text and all associated references into a footnote. Tim C (talk) 21:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I have moved some tedious detail in "Surveys of helmet use and cycling participation before and after the introduction of helmet laws" to the footnote. The whole thing is becoming unreadable as well as poorly structured with duplications. Dorre (talk) 03:30, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

This would result in a more misleading article, as most readers do not read footnotes. Many helmet studies, notably funded by governments keen to defend current policy, use flawed methodologies that exaggerate the benefits of helmets. Their results can be misleading. To include the claims in the main text, while putting balancing arguments in less prevalent footnotes results in the misleading material being given undue prominence.

A better way to make this article more readable would be not to include controversial studies. The claims and counter claims amount to little more than confusing people. That would be much clearer and more succinct than giving prominence to misleading claims.Harvey4931 (talk) 21:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

...

Tim ignored the reply that this could be abused to give undue prominence to misleading content, then now proceeds to do that. This violates Wikipedia policy of describing alternate points of view neutrally. Tim claims that this is done "to improve readability". This seems disingenuous. As discussed, a better way to improve readability is to remove the set of claims and counterclaims that confuses people.

Burying counterclaims in footnotes may not improve readability, but it does improve helmet advocates ability to mislead readers by giving undue prominence to misleading claims.Harvey4931 (talk) 10:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Since this technique of misusing footnotes has been exposed, a similar technique has emerged. It can be seen in this example:

“The sudden increase in helmet wearing by cyclists in NSW at the time of the introduction of compulsory helmet laws, corresponded with a sudden drop in the by-month ratio of head injury rates to limb injury rates in cyclists.[42] Criticisms of this study and a response by its authors have been published in the peer-reviewed literature, with additional commentary on web sites and blogs.[43][44][45][46]”

It is a slight variation on the misuse of footnotes technique. It presents a misleading claim as an assertion, then leaves the reader to dig out references to find out a balancing argument. This gives undue prominence to the misleading material, resulting in a misleading article.Harvey4931 (talk) 14:13, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not a "misleading claim". It is an accurate summary of the study results. The results may be unpalatable to some, but that what the results were. Tim C (talk) 22:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Attribution of articles published by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF) in this article

User:Kiwikiped has recently removed editorial attribution from references to anonymously-authored articles published by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF). In my view, this is unacceptable: if the BHRF is to be considered a reliable source as per WP guidelines, then named persons need to take responsibility for the material that is referenced. The vast majority of reliable sources do this by naming the authors of the content they publish. In some cases, the BHRF does this, but most of its articles are unattributed to any author. User:Richard Keatinge who is the sole board member of the UK company behind the BHRF, has explained elsewhere that this is done to protect the identity of the authors, and instead, the BHRF Editorial Board takes collective responsibility for such anonymously-authored content. OK, but in that case, members of the BHRF editorial board must be named as editors for any BHRF article referenced in WP which does not otherwise have a named author. Either that, or those references and the content which they support need to be removed from the article. The BHRF cannot have it both ways: it can't be considered a reliable source while also hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.

It would be helpful if User:Kiwikiped could explain the rationale for removing the list of named editors of referenced article, in the absence of named authors for those articles. And confirm that s/he has no conflict of interest with respect to the BHRF Editorial Board. Tim C (talk) 06:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The positive reason for removal is that it's a waste of space and gets in the way of the article. As a solution to your concerns about attribution, a link in the reference to the BHRF editorial board page might seem definitive? Richard Keatinge (talk) 10:01, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't paper-based: there's no shortage of space. In any case, the names of the editors only appear in the the references at the foot of the page, not in the text, thus they don't interfere with the readability of the text in any way. I have never seen references anywhere that substitute a URL for the names of the authors or editors. However, initials could reasonably be substituted for full given names of editorial board members. Would that be acceptable to you as a representative of the BHRF Editorial Board and director of the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation company? To date I don't think any other editors of this or related WP articles have identified themselves as BHRF editorial board members or patrons. I recall that BHRF Editorial Board member Nigel Perry contributed some comments on the Reliable Sources noticeboard, but hasn't made any contributions to this Talk page or article, as far as I can see - rather, complaints about inclusion of the names of BHRF Editorial Board members in references to otherwise anonymous BHRF articles have come from User:Kiwikiped. Tim C (talk) 11:12, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Sigh, User:Tim.churches behave! It would not be "helpful if User:Kiwikiped could explain the rationale" behind the edits made as that rationale has already been extensively covered in the above thread "Ding-dong over describing authors", a thread in which you participated, and to which User:Kiwikiped added an update describing the edits made.

Indeed in that thread you were explicitly advised that simply moving inappropriate sauce from one location to another did not make it appropriate, and yet for some inexplicable reason you went ahead and did just that.

And that previous thread is about both POVs adding inappropriate material to authors and references, it is not, and never has been, about any other particular organisation or individual. The cleanup I did did not only deal with references to one particular organisation or individual. If someone in future adds a lot of inappropriate cruft about any organisation or individual that too should be removed regardless of the perpetrator or target.

I favoured no POV in the cleanup, I removed what I found while noting above that I've probably missed stuff - both POVs indulge in this kind of behaviour.

User:Tim.churches creating a new thread and feigning ignorance of all the above is behaviour not appropriate for a learned gentleman such as yourself.

That previous thread used as an example the allegedly anonymous publication Kimberley Region: Searching for Wallabies. To follow your proposed non-standard reference style would see a over 60 names added to any reference to that publication!

But we don't need to use the WWF, we could use the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The article contains a reference to the allegedly anonymous Safety Standard for Bicycle Helmets, yet there as been no hue and cry over its lack of attribution to individuals. Nor should there be, this is standard referencing style and neither publication is anonymous, they are authored respectively by WWF Australia and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There is no "cloak of anonymity", if you wish to know about any organisation - WWF, CPSC, BHRF, CDC, etc., etc. - you simply need to read their own material, as is standard.

And I can assure you that if any POV battling over this article discovers that someone they disagree with happens to be associated with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and tries to add such a name to that reference it would be inappropriate and would need removing. This is an encyclopaedia article not a battleground for different POVs to score points over each other!

Now behave, all of you, and make this a real encyclopaedia article! Kiwikiped (talk) 19:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Kiwikiped, thank you for your contribution to this debate. I did not ignore your response the "Ding-Dong" section above about footnotes identifying the organisational affiliations of cited authors. I read it, and you will see that I duly removed such footnotes except in the "Proponents" and Opponents" section (which I think should be removed altogether, BTW), where affiliations of the named opponents or proponents with bicycle helmet-related organisations is clearly relevant and should be made known to the reader.

I started this thread because the issue is slightly different - it is about putting names to referenced content, not about putting organisations to names of referenced authors. Also, Talk threads become too difficult to follow and edit if they become too large.

The difference between the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF) and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, or indeed, the WWF, is that the BHRF is a small company based in Wales with a sole listed director (Richard Keatinge) which publishes material solely about bicycle helmets, with the aid of patrons and a small editorial board. The material it publishes is, for the most part, unattributed to specific authors, and the BHRF web site states that its editorial board takes responsibility for all content it publishes. Given that there are 14 members of that editorial board, it does not seem unreasonable or infeasible to list the names of those 14 people as editors for any BHRF content cited in this article for which there is no author name provided by BHRF.

It would be helpful if other WP editors who have identified themselves as BHRF Board Members, such as User:Nigel Perry, who contributed to the debate on whether the BHRF can be considered a reliable source under WP guidelines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nigel_Perry for a list of his contributions to that debate) would give their opinion here. I have sent a message via WP to User:Nigel Perry requesting his opinion on this issue. Tim C (talk) 21:02, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Sigh :-( Is exasperation your goal?

I certainly hope you do not draw other people in to defend themselves against imaginary faults, that would only feed the beast.

The issue here is not "slightly different" as you well know. In the previous thread the issue was covered. You proposed that in exchange for removing inappropriate attributions directly on authors names you would move them into the references instead. The response in that thread, and repeated immediately above was, and I quote:

Indeed in that thread you were explicitly advised that simply moving inappropriate sauce from one location to another did not make it appropriate, and yet for some inexplicable reason you went ahead and did just that.

Representatives of both main POVs have misbehaved over this article and between you all the result is mess, you need to stop this. This is an encyclopaedia article, it should present the various POVs in an NPOV manner, it is not a place for any POV too try to discredit the other. Stop it all of you.

Please go and carefully read the Wiki guideline mention above, sauce for the goose, and the one on gaming the system and stop trying to violate them. Such actions are not worthy of a gentleman of your standing, are damaging to Wikipedia, and I doubt they do your POV any good either. Kiwikiped (talk) 05:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Kiwikiped, you may sigh as much as you like, but I am acting entirely in good faith. I honestly fail to understand why listing the names of the BHRF editorial board members, as editors, for referenced BHRF articles that do not have a named author is somehow an "inappropriate attribution". It is important to know who is responsible for the referenced content. Here is why: if you peruse the text and the reference list of this article, and related WP articles on bicycle helmets, one cannot fail to notice just how many times the name of one particular author is mentioned: that author is Dorothy Robinson. Her published papers are cited over and over in these articles. But Dorothy Robinson is also a Patron of the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, and a Member of its Editorial Board. It is therefore important that it is apparent to readers that Dorothy Robinson is also responsible, at least in part, for BHRF articles which are cited in this article. The same applies, to a lesser degree, to Bill Curnow, and other members of the BHRF editorial board whose papers published elsewhere are cited in this WP article. In my view, it is entirely reasonable to required the individuals responsible for cited BHRF content to be named, ideally as authors of the content, but failing that, as members of the responsible editorial board. Why is this so objectionable? Could User:Richard Keatinge explain on behalf of the BHRF? Or perhaps User:Nigel Perry, another BHRF editorial board member? Tim C (talk) 07:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

And so the merry-go-round continues. Why must you two POVs play these games? Of course I'll sigh.

A summary, to see how this thread got to this point:

1. Enter The Fool (me). There is a war developing between User:Linda.m and User:Colin at cycling over the clearly non-neutral "a retired cycling coach and anti-helmet campaigner" attribution on an author's name. I create the "Ding-dong over describing authors" topic and tell both POVs to behave. Naive wasn't I.

2. To get the point across I construct an illustrative example of what not to do, based on "Sauce for the Goose...". The goose in this case was author Clarke, so I choose author Churches as the gander from the other POV. As if to help prove the point User:Tim.churches leaps in with accusations of an ad hominem attack. Sigh.

3. User:Tim.churches first argues that only some of the inappropriate sauce is invalid, some it is it needed because of the particular author's in question - it is of course coincidental that the author's requiring attribution come from the opposing POV (and, as another person observed, author's were being tagged for an association with an organisation which did not exist till years after the referenced work was published). But then User:Tim.churches has a proposal, all the inappropriate sauce can be removed provided he is allowed to relocate some of it into the references in a slightly different form. He is advised that moving sauce from one place to another would not change its nature, sauce is sauce.

4. User:Tim.churches goes ahead and moves some of the sauce anyway. Sigh. I edit the article, find all the stuff that I can regardless of which POV put it there and remove it. I add a note to the thread stating that I've done this and that is probably incomplete. I did say I was a fool didn't I?

5. User:Tim.churches starts a new topic, the one you're now reading, and asks why some of the sauce was removed. It seems we need a new topic because though the old one had covered this issue it becomes "slightly different" if you raise it again. The argument goes that the analogy provided in the first thread doesn't apply as the organisation now being targeted, which just coincidentally appears to have a different POV than the editor, is much smaller - "only 1 director" and "based in Wales". What does Wikipedia say about trying to game the system and spreading sauce? I ask both POVs to behave and follow the guidelines. This is an encyclopaedia article. Sigh. Did I say I was a fool?

6. User:Tim.churches offers the "what me Gov?" with a touch of the old "if you've got nothing to hide" fallacy to justify special treatment targeting one group. Tries again to drag in more folks, obviously nothing better than a good bun fight where these two POVs are concerned! Why must you two POVs play these games? Of course I'll sigh.

OK, so I'm a fool. You two POVs will probably never behave, this article will be fought over till the bitter end and Wikipedia steps in and locks it. But maybe there's some optimism left, maybe I should try one more analogy...

A. The argument is that one organisation is so special that the normal practices of referencing must be suspended. WWF authors, the AAA authors, the CPSC authors, all organisations can author... but not this one, it's special. It's apparently based in Wales (I admit I'm baffled as to the relevance of that), and it has one director - which sounds within normal bounds to me. I note from its website it has 8 patrons and an editorial board of 14, a total of 21 names (one overlap). It states its object as "to undertake, encourage, and spread the scientific study of the use of bicycle helmets, in the context of risk compensation and sustainable transport" - which according to the argument here means it is biased towards one of the POVs - the anti-helmet law one. Let it be the Goose.

B. We need a Gander. Let's work our way through the article's references... CPSC - probably too big, National Museum of American History - sounds big, Snell Memorial Foundation - I wonder... off to its webiste... We have its object on its opening page "dedicated to research, education, testing and development of helmet safety standards", I'm guessing one of the POVs might find this organisation "special" at some point in time, maybe we have our gander... It has 1.5 Directors (one is also the Laboratory Manager), and a total of 8 names - its small. We have our Gander.

C. Clearly (not really folks) the Snell Memorial Foundation is special; it has a single minded purpose, its another non-profit foundation, and it's small (but not from Wales). So it is: an unreliable source; or requires special none-standard references just in case any of the people associated with it (or their third cousins on their spouses side) have ever published anything (including before 1957); or whatever other constructed reason one POV or the other can come up with to maintain "neutrality"!

To both POVs: Stop playing games and behave. Read the gaming the system and spreading sauce (and probably other) guidelines. Follow them. Work together to produce an encyclopaedia article. This is not, and never has been, about individual authors or organisations - reference one, reference another, reference Uncle Tom Cobley; just do it consistently following normal standards and without adding sauce!

Give hope to this fool. Please. Kiwikiped (talk) 22:59, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Severe scolding noted. Dickens was fond of a well-cooked goose, I believe. Tim C (talk) 07:41, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Update:

As before I've been in and done some cleanup, this time on the pages Bicycle Helmets in Australia and Bicycle Helmets in New Zealand. I took no notice of who had made edits (I didn't even look, working from page content only) or the POV of those edits, I just cleaned up. There were a few references which were incorrectly structured (producing errors on the page), so I fixed those as well. My only observation is that whoever (as I said I didn't both to look) the folk are who editing the New Zealand page they seem far better behaved based on what the current content is. The Australian page contains a few long quotes in the references - not usually the place to put such things - maybe this an editing mishap and a delimiter is in the wrong place? I didn't look into those. Kiwikiped (talk) 02:32, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Kiwikiped, the references in this article and in Bicycle helmets in Australia have both been subject to vandalism by User:Chris_Capoccia - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Chris_Capoccia - the broken references may be due to that. I tried to fix the damage as best I could, but when someone strips most of the attributes out of a reference template, as User:Chris_Capoccia did, repeatedly, a horde of wikipedia robots descend on the article and try to fix it, but just make it worse, and impossible to cleanly revert the damage if it is not noticed quickly and other edits are made. Any computer scientist familiar with graph theory would recognise the problem. Good to see that you will be fixing such problems henceforth. Tim C (talk) 07:41, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

ROFL!!!! if you think i'd create broken references, you're sadly mistaken! i've been fixing!  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 11:27, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Chris Capoccia, I do think that and I'm not mistaken. Here's the proof - note that URLs which in many cases link to full-text versions of papers have been removed. In some cases, all details of the reference except a DOI have been removed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bicycle_helmet&diff=prev&oldid=550882662 And here - note that all details from references except the DOI have been removed, which effectively destroys the reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bicycle_helmets_in_New_Zealand&diff=prev&oldid=552556765 A glance at your edit history shows you have been wreaking similar havoc all over wikipedia, probably with some badly written bot you have scripted, and people have been posting on your Talk page asking you to stop: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Chris_Capoccia&target=Chris+Capoccia Tim C (talk) 12:16, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

do you know that you can look at more than one revision at a time? when you look at my whole series of edits including the edits where i directed citation bot, they are not vandalism, but are improving a lot of things. diff.  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 12:44, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Chris Capoccia & Tim C - Just in case it was not clear, the fixes I made, over and above those indicated by this thread, where essentially structural. Wikipedia was complaining that some references were badly formed, others did not appear correctly/consistently as they were not in cite format - I just fixed these. If there is an issue of the content of the references then you two should start a new topic or the issue will get lost in the tail end of this one. Kiwikiped (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Said user has been merrily reformatting references all over wikipedia. In most cases his actions are harmless (changing reference template attributes to the ones he considers to be correct), in some cases he has made minor improvements by templating otherwise unformatted references, or adding URLs to some references that lacked them. But in quite a few cases, including references to papers of which I or some of my colleagues at UNSW are co-authors, he has arbitrarily removed URLs from the references which link to freely-available full-text copies of the papers, thereby making it harder for readers of the article to examine these papers in detail). He did this a few weeks ago - I duly put back the URLs he had removed and posted a note on his Talk page asking him to stop removing URLs from references. He did it again to a related article - I reverted those changes and posted a template on his Talk page asking him to stop - alongside similar requests from editor of other WP article he had edited in this fashion. He also repeatedly inserted templates referring to me specifically, in bad faith, on this Talk page - templates which are intended to be used when a WP editor is editing an article about themselves - which is clearly not the case (I am not a bicycle helmet, nor is there any WP article about me, nor should there be one). A few hours ago he did it again to the references in this article - URL links to several freely-available full-text copies (all of which respect copyright and licensing conditions of the publishers, BTW) have been removed. Fixing such destructive edits is a Sisyphean task which now falls to someone else if they so choose - I've already done my bit regarding this. Tim C (talk) 22:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Back to the business of long lists of names as "editors" of a reference: it merely strikes me as silly. The references are appropriately attributed to the organization and I suppose could be even more clearly attributed by a hyperlink to the editorial board. If I were to insert my own name in this way it would be obviously inappropriate advertising, and there is the potential for mild embarrassment if some future reader thinks that's exactly what I've done. However, if I got worried about everything on Wikipedia that seems silly and mildly embarrassing I'd spend all my life worrying; we do need to let other editors have their way at times even if we're fairly sure they're wrong. This is one of the many features of the article that I personally would be prepared to let ride as not worth the trouble, until a consensus requires its removal. But, just to be clear, I'd be happy with normal attribution to the organization, unbothered by an extra hyperlink to the editorial board page, and thoroughly unimpressed with a long list of names. Richard Keatinge (talk) 21:04, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The other, and best solution would be for the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF) to provide a short list of names of the authors, or failing that, the editorial board members responsible for each BHRF article cited in WP. Then there would be no argument here about to whom to attribute cited BHRF articles. My complaints about lack of personal attribution of BHRF material cited in WP may seem pedantic, but the context is that this and related WP articles have been heavily edited since their inception by one or more pseudonymous WP editors who are clearly closely associated with the BHRF, but who have failed to confirm or deny any conflict of interest they might have with respect to BHRF article, despite requests to do so (WP policy prevents me from naming names here, but I am obviously not referring to you, User:Richard Keatinge - your behaviour in declaring conflict of interest with respect to the BHRF has been exemplary). So be it: both WP and BHRF seem to value pseudonymity or anonymity over personal responsibility for authorship or editorship. Tim C (talk) 22:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Richard Keatinge & Tim C - There is no issue that needs a solution. We just follow standard well-established practice and Wikipedia guidelines. Organisations; of all shapes, sizes, colours, fields, locations, etc., etc.; author stuff, that is reality and we've no need to invent "special categories" to alter this reality - and doing so violates guidelines anyway. It was some ride, we had some extra turns, but it has ended, the merry-go-round has stopped, we can all go home, and I'm just about analogied (yes, it's not a word) out! Kiwikiped (talk) 02:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

The wikipedia merry-go-round never stops - all one can do is jump off. Tim C (talk) 04:36, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

:-) I should have said "we can all move on to other rides in the fairground" rather than "go home" Kiwikiped (talk) 06:32, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Why would anyone spend so much of their energy targeting BHRF? Wasn’t the discussion in Talk:Bicycle helmets in Australia enough?Harvey4931 (talk) 14:00, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Confusing science with junk science.

There seems to be some confusion between genuine science and junk science, from the studies quoted in this article. Such junk science is typically funded by a party with a vested interest, making misleading claims. One of them is the study from Attewell, described as follows:

“A 2001 meta-analysis of sixteen studies by Attewell et al. found that, compared to helmeted cyclists, unhelmeted cyclists were 2.4 times more likely to sustain a brain injury; 2.5 times more likely to sustain a head injury; and 3.7 times more likely to sustain a fatal injury.[89][90]”

This fails to disclose that the study was done by an Australian government agency with a vested interest in defending its controversial helmet law. In the executive summary, the authors deplore the low helmet wearing rate, hinting at what the real purpose of the study is.

The study claims to "provides overwhelming evidence in support of helmets for preventing head injury and fatal injury". That cannot be true. Observational data cannot produce overwhelming evidence, as there is no control group, and confounding factors are difficult to separate. This meta-analysis only picked 6 studies, all in favor in helmets. Such cherry-picking is not science.

In 2003, this study was rebutted in a technical journal. http://people.aapt.net.au/~theyan/cycling/Accident%20Analysis%20Prevention%202.pdf The rebuttal concluded: "This examination concentrates on injury to the brain and shows that the meta-analysis and its included studies take no account of scientific knowledge of its mechanisms. Consequently, the choice of studies for the meta-analysis and the collection, treatment and interpretation of their data lack the guidance needed to distinguish injuries caused through fracture of the skull and by angular acceleration. It is shown that the design of helmets reflects a discredited theory of brain injury. The conclusions are that the meta-analysis does not provide scientific evidence that such helmets reduce serious injury to the brain, and the Australian policy of compulsory wearing lacks a basis of verified efficacy against brain injury." The study authors did not reply to the rebuttal, thus giving up on its claims.

In 2011, this study was re-analysed. http://www.cycle-helmets.com/elvik.pdf The re-analysis concluded: "This paper shows that the meta-analysis of bicycle helmet efficacy reported by Attewell, Glase, and McFadden (Accident Analysis and Prevention 2001, 345–352) was influenced by publication bias and time-trend bias that was not controlled for. As a result, the analysis reported inflated estimates of the effects of bicycle helmets". This should not be surprising, given the cherry-picking of favorable studies. A 2012 revision of this re-analysis confirms the publication and time-trend bias, and concludes that: "According to the new studies, no overall effect of bicycle helmets could be found when injuries to head, face or neck are considered as a whole." Yet it has been misrepresented in the article without mentioning the publication and time-trend bias.

Despite the conflicts of interests and the exposed flaws in the study, this study has been misrepresented in this article as if it was genuine science. This is misleading & deceptive. Such junk science should not quoted in Wikipedia as if it was genuine science. It may be a good illustration of propaganda from a government desperate to justify its controversial legislation, but it is not science.

Another misrepresentation using junk science relates to rotational injury. This is the current description in the rotational injury Section: "Curnow has suggested that the major causes of permanent intellectual disablement and death after head injury may be torsional forces leading to diffuse axonal injury(DAI), a form of injury which usual helmets cannot mitigate and may make worse.[79] However, Curnow's hypotheses are disputed" ...

This is highly biased and misleading. It denigrates the findings that helmets can increase rotational acceleration as "curnow's hypothesis". That is not true. This was first reported by research conducted in 1987 (mentioned in the previous paragraph), and confirmed by other studies. It cannot be denigrated as an hypothesis.

Another "study" is quoted, claiming that it proves that helmets reduce brain injury. It is described as follows: "An experimental study (to be published) by McIntoshet al. tested Curnow’s hypothesis that bicycle helmets increase angular acceleration during a crash, and found that they actually reduced both linear and angular acceleration by a considerable margin.[44][143] "

This is highly misleading as it fails to disclose that the study was about motorcycle helmets, not bicycle helmets. Additionally, this study was conducted at unrealistically low speeds (35 km/h) for motorcycles.

Such junk science has no place in Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harvey4931 (talk • contribs) 08:28, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that junk science has no place in wikipedia. However, studies performed by bona fide researchers and published in peer-reviewed journals or published by government departments cannot be just dismissed as junk science just because you don't like their findings. To assert that studies undertaken in universities or other institutions that receive government funding are somehow untrustworthy or junk isfrankly absurd as the stuff of fringe conspiracy theories. Curnow's hypotheses were described as such because, as far as I am aware, Curnow undertook no biomechanical experiments, he examined no injured brains post-mortem, he collected no clinical data on injured cyclists. If you read his papers about rotational injury and DAI, you'll find that he refers to various papers which don;t mention cyclists r bicycle helmets at all, and then extrapolates that to cyclists. That makes his view a hypothesis. The McIntosh study, which sets out to test the Curnow hypothesis with actual experiments, is indeed a study of bicycle helmets, as well as motorcycle helmets. Tim C (talk) 11:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Harvey4931, if you think there is material in the article which shouldn't be there, argue you case here. If there is consensus, then it can be removed. If no consensus, then you'll have to live with it, or attempt to convince everyone of your position. Likewise, if you think the article is too detailed or unencyclopaedic, then re-write sections and present them here on the Talk page for comment. If there is consensus, then they can replace sections of text in the article. But you can't make large-scale re-writes, which just completely remove references to relevant research published in reputable peer-reviewed scientific journals, as you have just done, without discussion and good-faith attempts at arriving at consensus with other editors of this article. Sorry, that's how WP works. For now, I am reverting your changes. Tim C (talk) 11:15, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Wiki rules state that reviews are preferred over individual studies. There are now sufficient reviews of time series analyses, including all Canadian provinces with and without helmet laws (Dennis et. al 2013), US helmet laws (Chatterji, P. and S. Markowitz, Effects of Bicycle Helmet Laws on Children's Injuries. 2013, National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18773.pdf.) not to mention Australia that it doesn't really seem necessary to present the much more confusing picture created by citing individual studies. Dorre (talk) 21:58, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Dorre, Yes, WP guidelines encourage reference to review and summary sources where possible. But note that User:Harvey4931 deleted reference to the Attewell et al. meta-analysis, which is exactly the type of review or summary source to which you are referring, claiming it was unreliable because it was government-funded. Such edits are unacceptable. However, there are quite a few areas of helmet research in which there are no comprehensive reviews (the rotational issues, for example), of in which the last reviews were published quite some time ago, and thus don't reflect research in the last 5 or 6 years. In such circumstances, there is no choice but to reference individual studies and papers, if the article is to be up-to-date, as it should be. Due to the controversial nature of the subject, if an editor wishes to undertake a major re-write of a section, or the entire article, then s/he must present a draft of the re-write on these Talk pages for discussion before proceeding. Large-scale changes or deletions cannot be made unilaterally. Tim C (talk) 22:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Tim C, Please do not use a straw man argument: misrepresenting my position in an attempt to denigrate it. This is derogatory. I have NEVER asserted that all studies funded by the government are untrustworthy.

It is standard practice to disclose funding and conflicts of interests. A conflict of interest is a warning signal, nothing more. It is disclosed because it is a relevant information. It does not make the material worthless. The denigrating statement that I do not accept junk science because "you don't like their findings" is another unfounded derogatory statement. Please do not make any further unfounded or derogatory accusations.

Flawed or misleading material should not be misrepresented as science. It is the unscientific methods used, as well as misleading statements not supported by the data, that makes them unworthy. The Attewell study has been rebutted twice, and has been shown to be influenced by publication bias and time-trend bias. There is a clear conflict of interest. The study makes impossible policy related claims. All this makes its claims not reliable. No tangible reason has been supplied to justify why such flawed and biased material should be presented as if it was genuine science.

A large edit was made by Tim C on the 19th of May. It was claimed that the changes were reverting other changes not discussed in the talk page. This is not true. Each of these change has been discussed upfront in the talk pages. This bulk edit also contained several unrelated stealth changes (Not first time deceptive changes occurred like that). Notably, a misleading description of his own study was put back yet again, despite being discussed many times in the talk pages. Additionally, the following description of a study recently added in rotational acceleration section was deleted.

Research done in Sweden in 1991 reported that "The non-shell helmet did in all trials grab the asphalt surface, which rotated the head together with the helmet. The consequences were in addition to the rotating of the head, a heavily bent and compressed neck, transmitted on through the whole test dummy body after the impact". An average angular acceleration of 20,800 rad/s-² for rotating the head was reported.

The next day Tim C added back the same study, using a misleading description that downplays the risks of rotational acceleration and neck injury for non-shell helmets, as if the version stealthily deleted never existed.

A 1993 study of bicycle helmet chin-strap forces in simulated oblique road surface impacts measured peak rotational acceleration in crash test dummy heads of 28000 rads/s2 for a non-shell helmet (also known as "soft-shell" helmets) in a 34km/h test. However, the investigators reported that "...[hard] shell helmets slid against the asphalt surface and there was only a slight angular movement of the head when the head was pushed upwards." Comparison tests on unhelmeted crash test heads were not performed.[143]

Those bulk deceptive changes have been reverted until the discussion is resolved. I trust that Tim C is capable of following his own rule of not making bulk changes without discussing them first. It would also be helpful if he stopped making misleading descriptions in the revision history while making stealth changes. Harvey4931 (talk) 14:40, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Again, I remind other editors that it is NOT acceptable to accuse other editors, by name, of misdeeds without evidence. I am accused of "deceptive edits". How can edits on WP be deceptive when every single change is recorded in the page history, logged for all to see and examine, and all but edits marked as minor are notified by email to all who are watching the page. I, like almost all editors, have been very careful to use the minor edit tag only for corrections of typos and formatting issues, not substantive content changes. Again, I remind User:Harvey4931 that personal accusations against other WP editors are NOT acceptable. Tim C (talk) 22:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the 1993 Swedish study (previously reported as a 1991 study), I took the time to read the report in question (it is available online as per the reference) and discovered it was in fact a test of helmet chin straps, not of rotational acceleration, and that the authors had reported rotational acceleration results as an additional finding on a single page of the 30-odd page report. I absolutely stand by my summary of their findings in that regard - they reported a high rotational acceleration figure for a soft-shell helmet (of early 19990s design) at 34km/h (which is quite a high speed for bicycle helmet testing), but they also very clearly stated that they did not observe such high rotational acceleration values when they tested hard shell helmets. And they did not test an unhelmeted test dummy head, and thus no conclusions can be drawn from this Swedish study about whether soft-shell or any type of helmet improves or worsens rotational acceleration compared to an unhelmeted head. Tim C (talk) 22:23, 28 May 2013 (UTC)