Steven Levitt shares data that shows car seats are no more effective than seatbelts in protecting kids from dying in cars. However, during the Q&A, he makes one crucial caveat.
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In 2006, I bought Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's first book Freakonomics and, like the four million other people who bought the book, thought it was excellent. It was full of originality with chapters on why parents disadvantage their children with bad names and why crack dealers live with…
Steven Levitt writes:
My view is that the emails [extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia] aren't that damaging. Is it surprising that scientists would try to keep work that disagrees with their findings out of journals? When I told my father that I…
Here's a chance for some skeptical activism if you happen to live in New York and its environs. It's book promotion event for the most recent anti-vaccine propaganda piece, Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our…
by Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
[Editor's note: A version of this piece was published in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 28, 2001 under the title "Pools more dangerous than guns." ]
What's more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there…
This guy's approach, where he weaves the story of the "two cures" without telling you what he's actually taking about -- to build the suspense or whatever the hell he thinks he's doing -- is annoying as hell, to the point that if I were in the audience, I would have thrown a soda at him by about 45 seconds... What an asshole.
I thought the cure thing was a brilliant idea executed here for the very first time and done poorly. Yes, annoying as hell. The TED audience was getting a first draft. Maybe the guy has a future in blogging.
But I went ahead an put this up because I think his point is interesting. (This does not mean I agree with him.)
the point is interesting, but the idea that he is trying to "resolve" the date into his hypothesis seems a bit off. to me that smacks of refusing to let go of a concept, despite the evidence against it, or at least of an extremely narrow view... I think the TED producers made the interesting decision to include just that one question at the end. I've watched a lot of their videos, and that is pretty unusual.
btw, in the story of the father and the placebo pills, he left out a third possible reason for fewer patients coming back, that they were actually sick and had died in the interim. his lack of interest in the serious injury outcome and the father's apparent lack of interest in follow-up care seem of a piece...
I'd have to look more into the matter to form an opinion on his conclusion, but speaking to the talk itself:
The idea was a good one, it was definitely the delivery that was lacking.
Levitt has posted his thoughts.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/a-speech-of-mine-that-…