> > On 4/10/2012 8:45 PM, Wes Groleau wrote:
> >> On 04-10-2012 18:44, sms88 wrote:
> >>> Who do you think the politicians are going to believe?

> >> Whoever pays them enough or gets them re-elected.

> > When it comes to something like helmets, there's very little downside
> > for politicians to take the word of paramedics, doctors, nurses, and
> > public safety officials versus some lunatic who shows up insisting that
> > if a helmet law is enacted everyone will stop riding bicycles and
> > instead sit in front of the TV eating fatty snacks and becoming obese
> > and contracting heart disease.

> The sad thing is that to some extent, paramedics, doctors, nurses, and
> public safety officials are just like everybody else.  They only appear
> to be experts.  I did a lot of reading of medical research when I found
> out I am diabetic.  One thing I learned is that a huge amount of what
> we are told is almost as bad as that last "forward this to everyone you
> know" e-mail.

> I now realize my college room-mate was correct.  He was a Psychology
> major, and he used to say something like,

> "The psychological literature is
>    10% empirical research;
>    40% what the author suspects is true; and
>    50% quoting the 40%."

> It appears to be similar in a lot of other fields.