Talk:Bicycle helmets in Australia/Archive 3

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Addition of 1993 quote from Mayer Hillman

User:Colin at cycling added a quote from a 20 year-old non-peer-reviewed report by a UK policy analyst Mayer Hillman asserting that bicycle helmets do not protect from rotational injury. The Hillman report is not available online, but the quote gives a reference to this assertion: McCarthy 1992. Presumably this reference is to an opinion piece in the BMJ by Mike McCarthy - see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1883058/ - in which MCarthy makes the assertion that "...helmets may lessen direct compression but do not protect the brain from rotational trauma" without the support of any references or citations of biomechanical or epidemiological research (in fact, no references in support of this assertion at all). For these reasons, I don't think this quote meets WP standards for sufficient authority. Furthermore, this article is about bicycle helmets in Australia. The 20 year old opinions of a UK policy analyst just do not belong in this article. Therefore removing the addition. Tim C (talk) 11:08, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Colin at cycling The statement by Dr Hillman has not been disputed in almost 20 years. Both medical professions Mike McCarthy Senior lecturer University of London at the time and Dr Hillman Senior Fellow Emeritus who had both written about cycling, health and safety, they had suitable infortmation backgrounds to support their statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 11:22, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree - neither Hillman nor McCarthy cite any research in support of their claims. Neither are expert injury researchers. Also, the quote is 20 years old - there has been more research since then - indeed, the most recent research is mentioned in the preceding sentence. The addition of such a 20 year old quote from a UK policy person at that particular point in this article about bicycle helmets in Australia is misplaced given that recent Australian helmet research is being covered in this section of the article. It is not necessary to offset every positive helmet research finding with a juxtaposed quote which sheds doubt on helmet effectiveness. If the quote warrants mention in WP at all (I don't believe it does), then it should be added to the relevant section of the main Bicycle helmet article. Tim C (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I've yet to see any suggestion that helmets were ever expected to reduce rotational injury, and given a respectable source we could probably keep the statement that they probably don't. I agree with Tim Churches here; I don't see that it helps this article at all and, with much other argumentation, I suggest it should stay out. Richard Keatinge (talk) 10:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Trial of footnotes

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)

-Who determines which studies are controversial and which ones aren't? Is there any study cited in this article that isn't controversial in some way? If Footnotes are the way to go then it's an all or nothing approach and all sources have to be treated equally. Dsnmi (talk) 02:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Nobody needs to determine controversial studies. They become apparent from the claims and counter claims. There is enough data and studies that are not controversial to make a clear article.Harvey4931 (talk) 01:59, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. I can't find any studies on this page so far that aren't controversial in some way and can't be counter-claimed by someone. Helmet advocates will no doubt claim studies that aren't refutable and helmet deniers will claim the same thing about their favourite papers but both will be wrong. If we're going to try and rescue this article and maintain a neutral POV then we have to have a universal approach to all studies and a rigid level of consistent behaviour. Dsnmi (talk) 02:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Let's not pretend to be neutral while denigrating those of oppose helmet compulsion as "helmet deniers". There are degrees of controversy. At least we can agree on applying the same principles to all studies.Harvey4931 (talk) 10:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes we definitely should treat all studies equally and treat every one as controversial and apply the same system to all. We don't have to pretend neutrality on this page we should strive to actually make it neutral without any pretence. A neutral presentation of the data and facts related to helmets in Australia without editorialising or bias should be our mutual aim. Dsnmi (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Reversion of addition of off-topic material by User: Colin at cycling

User:Colin at cycling has added a whole major section, titled "Head rotation and injury rates", without any consultation, and which is not specific to the topic of this article, which is bicycle helmets in Australia. There is already a sub-section titled "rotational injury" in the main Bicycle helmet article and the material added belongs there, if it meets WP standards (noting that only one author, Curnow, has pushed the rotational injury theory about bicycle helmets - that is, it is not a widely held concern amongst injury experts that bicycle helmets cause or worsen rotational injury to the brian, and recent evidence suggests that they don't). However, I also note that much of the material added to this new section is a non-NPOV rehash of material that is already in the main article. In addition, the new major section has been added in a way that makes subsequent sections subordinate to it, when they should not be. In view of this major disruption to the article, I am reverting the changes. Tim C (talk) 12:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Tim C says

"this new section is a non-NPOV rehash of material that is already in the main article" It is not intended to be, can precise details of the non-NPOV be provided? ~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 16:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Response by User:Tim.churches: Sure. User:Colin at cycling added:

"StClair and Chinn recorded acceleration in helmet tests from approximately 3000 to 20000 rad./sec2, higher than the level that could result in death. Average rotational acceleration for size E, 54cms, were 5333 rad./sec2 compared to J size, 57cms, of 13505 rad./sec2."

The StClair and Chinn report is available online. Here is the relevant section of the abstract for the report:

"Assuming that the response of the unhelmeted head is similar to the helmeted head during an oblique impact at 8.5m/s at 15º, this may generate between 7500rad/s² and 12000rad/s² of rotational acceleration. This is potentially more severe than the 3000rad/s² to 8500rad/s² measured during abrasive and projection oblique tests with size 54cm (E) helmeted headforms. However, for the most severe cases using a size 57cm (J) headform, rotational acceleration was typically greater than 10,000rad/s² and increased to levels of 20,000rad/s², a level at which a 35% - 50% risk of serious AIS3+ injuries is anticipated. Overall, it was concluded that for the majority of cases considered, the helmet can provide life saving protection during typical linear impacts and, in addition, the typical level of rotational acceleration observed using a helmeted headform would generally be no more injurious than expected for a bare human head."

Thus, the material added to the article gives the reader the impression that StClair and Chinn found that helmets increase rotational acceleration compared to a non-helmeted situation, but in fact, they found no such thing. The addition of selected facts from StClair and Chinn while omitting their conclusion that "...the typical level of rotational acceleration observed using a helmeted headform would generally be no more injurious than expected for a bare human head" represents a non-NPOV edit.

User:Colin at cycling added:

"Williams in Australia evaluated the protective performance of 64 helmets and provided details of the impact locations, most were to the sides and temporal regions, few to the crown or some to the front. This suggested that most impacts will incur a level of rotation."

This omits the important detail that Williams evaluated helmets from crashes occurring between 1987 and 1989, with experiements on new helmets available in Australia in 1989, which is 24 years ago. Both helmet technology and construction techniques and helmet testing standards have improved substantially since then - bicycle helmets have evolved and changed a lot in the last quarter of a century. To mention the Williams research while omitting this detail represents a non-NPOV edit in my opinion.

User:Colin at cycling added:

"[Colin] Clarke 2007 compared possible impacts for helmeted v non-helmeted head profile in the occipital region and relative impact forces and number of impacts, reasoning that helmets will incur more impacts than a bare head due to their larger size. Total relative helmeted forces were 54% higher based on a head to helmet width ratio of 1.27, but the average force per impact was lower"

The reference given is for a paper given at a cycling conference, not a peer-reviewed scientific conference or journal. Clarke appears to be a cycling activist, not an injury epidemiologist or statistician, nor a biomechanical safety expert. As such, the source given for these statements does not meet WP standards for authority.

Finally, User:Colin at cycling added the text:

"Many factors may be involved in a crash, impact velocity, impact locations, size of helmet, how well a fit, style of helmets, if a near miss may occur for a bare head, Experiments may account for some aspects."

No source, reference or authority was provided for these assertions, and thus they must be assumed to be the opinion of the editor who added them. I think that the intent is to suggest that experimental studies on helmets do not precisely replicate all the aspects of real-life helmet/head impacts in cycling accidents. The question is whether the important aspects are replicated in experiments. That is a complex technical question, and requires referenced scientific evidence. Tim C (talk) 23:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Response by Colin at cycling: Thank you Tim for those details. Picking out the important points.

The figures I quote for helmet impacts are measured results for modern helmets, 5333 rad./sec2 and 13505 rad./sec2, 20000 rad./sec2.

"Assuming that the response of the unhelmeted head is similar to the helmeted head" This assumption is invalid, a bare head/hair coefficient of friction is about 0.15 (hair), helmets about 0.4. Reporting the StClair and Chinn assumption would be adding to their invalid approach.

“...the typical level of rotational acceleration observed using a helmeted headform would generally be no more injurious than expected for a bare human head"

Could be included but a note to say this is disputed, Cyclehelmets.org provides discussion of this issue. It takes no account of near misses for bare head that result in impacts for one helmeted.

“This omits the important detail that Williams evaluated helmets from crashes occurring between 1987 and 1989, with experiments on new helmets available in Australia in 1989, which is 24 years ago.”

Williams details the impact locations and this information is likely to be similar today, mainly to the sides and frontal temporal areas. 'In 1991 Williams in Australia', a simple change dates the article, but also the citation dates the article.

“Clarke 2007 compared possible impacts for helmeted” Velocity Munch 2007 included the paper, after reviewing. Clarke published ‘Safer Cycling 1995’ an 80 page technical booklet on safety issues and cycling. Restricting Wiki comments to selected groups?

The details provided added important information and intended as a NPOV but granted more information could have been added, but the length of the article is already long and trying to be concise was also a priority.

~~Colin at cycling:~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 09:40, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I did not say that the StClair and Chinn results weren't for modern helmets. I only pointed out that you had failed to mention the crucial fact that they didn't provide any results for unhelmeted heads by comparison, but that they clearly state that they expect unhelmeted heads to be no better with respect to radial acceleration.

I am sorry, but anonymously-authored and undated web pages on cyclehelmets.org do not meet the WP standards for verifiability when it comes to biomechanical aspects of helmet performance, IMO. The BHRF/cyclehelmets.org is not a scientific journal, and AFAIK, none of its "editorial board" are biomechanicists or have been invlved in actual helmet testing. Regarding near misses, I suspect that it is untestable in real-life, and would require hyper-detailed and very accurate computer simulations of accidents in order to investigate. Such research has not been done. But I will observe that most head impacts in on-road bicycle accidents are with the road surface, which tends to be a large object not easily avoided even by an unhelmeted head.

Yes, William with a year could be added to this article, but not your editorial commentary on it.

Yes, material to be included in WP articles is restricted - see the WP policy at Wikipedia:Verifiability. As I said, the opinions of a cycling advocate presented at cycling conference do not constitute sufficient authority for a discussion of the biomechanics of head collisions in bicycle accidents. A paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal on biomechanics or similar, or a conference paper by a recognised biomechanical researcher, is required to back up such assertions.

However, my point remains that this material, with the possible exception of Williams, belongs in the main WP article on [Bicycle helmets], because it is not specific to helmets in Australia. Tim C (talk) 20:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Tim C (talk) 20:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC) says “Yes, material to be included in WP articles is restricted - see the WP policy at Wikipedia:Verifiability. As I said, the opinions of a cycling advocate presented at cycling conference do not constitute sufficient authority for a discussion of the biomechanics of head collisions in bicycle accidents. A paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal on biomechanics or similar, or a conference paper by a recognised biomechanical researcher, is required to back up such assertions.”

Tim is referring to a published paper by Velocity cycling confernce Munich 2007, it considered the impacts that could occur for a helmeted profile compared to non-helmeted profile together with a range of helmet issues. (http://www.nationaler-radverkehrsplan.de/eu-bund-laender/eu/velocity/presentations/velocity2007_pp_17c_long_public.pdf). The ECF and Velocity have review committees and scientists who consider cycling information before accepting it as suitable for publication and including in their program. The author of the report provides his email address in case any questions arise.

Accepting published reports from cycling conferences allows Wikipedia to provide much more information than would occur from a narrow selection from specialists, that is if they addressed a particular topic. Funding may not be available or other projects may have higher priorities. Bikesafe Conference Newcastle 1986 provided a range of useful report, various Velocity conferences provide very useful reports. Allowing a selection process by Tim or others to suit a particular point of view is not a progressive or fair approach. Tim or others are free to point to any weaknesses or errors in reports and this allows a suitable balance. ~~Colin at cycling~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 10:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Injury rates

User:Colin at cycling added - Hillman stated, "they do not protect the head from rotational trauma which can seriously damage the brain and brain stem and which is quite common when cyclists are hit a glancing blow from a motor vehicle rather than in direct collision with it (McCarthy, 1992)".[78]

Reasons, Dr Hillman Senior Fellow Emerious and who wrote the MBA publication Cylcing Towards Health and Safety 1992 view are worthy of including as perhaps the most qualified person in the world on cycling and health aspects. The quote is from his considered report on cycle helmets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin at cycling (talk • contribs) 11:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Colin -- That hypothesis is not supported by the evidence. As noted by TimC and others, the work by Andrew McIntosh using a dummy test found no evidence helmet wearing exacerbated injuries and, in fact, found helmet wearing protective in that regard. Additionally, using real world data, we could only identify at most 12 cases of diffuse axonal injury (7 were unhelmeted and 5 wore helmets). These results are found in peer-reviewed papers published this year.JakeOlivier (talk) 01:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Resurrection of archived sections of this Talk page by User:Harvey4931

User:Harvey4931 has resurrected a large section of this Talk page that had been archived, but doesn't seem to have added anything to that discussion. Was this a mistake? Can it be archived again? All the past discussion is still available on the archive page for this Talk i.e. it is still readily accessible. Bringing back old discussions but then not adding anything is potentially very confusing. Tim C (talk) 05:28, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I deleted two large sections that I initially instigated because I thought this page was becoming enormous and the two sections were no longer relevant and were no longer being added to. I have no idea why User:Harvey4931 felt the need to return one. If he can provide a good explanation as to why he thinks it's necessary I'd be interested to hear it but if he can't I'd be in favour of getting rid of it again. Dsnmi (talk) 10:28, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Didn't know there was an archive. Where is it & how to access it? I have restored this section as it is still relevant to some of the current discussions. Keeping the section in the same place makes it easier to understand the context behind other discussion. I have no problems removing old sections that are no longer relevant.Harvey4931 (talk) 10:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Top right of this Talk page there is a box labelled "Archives". Click on the Archive 1 link. Tim C (talk) 04:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Use of Cyclists Action Group web pages as references

Currently there are two instances in this article in which self-published, anonymous web pages on the web site of an organisation called the Cyclists Rights Action Group (CRAG) are used as sources for statements and assertions in the article. I do not think that such web pages meet the WP policy requirements for reliable sources, and instead fall into the self-published category. In particular, the "About US" page of the CRAG web site states: "The Cyclists Rights Action Group (CRAG) was formed at a public meeting in Canberra, ACT, Australia, on 30th January 1992, in direct response to the introduction of Mandatory Helmet Laws (MHL) for bicyclists, with the aim of protecting cyclists against undue interference by Governments and erosion of civil liberties. The current aim of CRAG is to oppose legislation compelling cyclists to wear helmets." As such, it is impossible to consider CRAG or its web site as a reliable, unbiased source with a neutral point-of-view - the organisation has an explicit agenda and thus should not be used as a source for material in this WP article. I propose removal of the references and the statements and assertions which they are used to support. Tim C (talk) 21:40, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The organization is used as a reference for one statement of fact (what was said by an official inquiry), and one of opinion. It is not peer-reviewed. While I note that a partisan approach does not disqualify sources (and if it did we'd have little to put in this article) this website is clearly inappropriate as a source for opinion stated in Wikipedia's voice. I have removed it. To re-insert anything like it we would need an appropriate source.

We could use this website for the statement of fact if we thought this appropriate and worthwhile, though a reference to some official source would be much better. (The original comments were made before widespread use of the Internet and may not be available on line - it would in this case be best to have a proper reference to the official publication and to use the website merely as a conveniently-available recension.) Richard Keatinge (talk) 11:14, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

The CRAG site is clearly partisan and it is inappropriate to use it as a reference. By all means point to it as an example of an Australian anti-helmet law lobby group, but it falls well outside WP guidelines for reliable sources. Note that absence of a reliable source from the Inetrnet does not mean that unreliable sources can be substituted. The paragraph in question refers to a 1985 report from a 1978 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Road Safety inquiry. As such, copies of the report will exist in the National Library of Australia, the Parliamentary Library or possibly in Hansard. The report should thus be properly referenced, including the relevant page numbers. The Unreliable Source tag should remain on the CRAG reference until the proper reference is substituted (and can be verified). Tim C (talk) 20:55, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Please refer to the discussion about the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation. It is biased to dismiss factual information from a source on the basis of disagreeing with the source stated position. The same principle should apply for all. Because you disagree with someone position doesn't mean you can dismiss everything from this source. Opinions from biased sources have no place in Wikipedia. However, the facts they quote cannot be dismissed. The reference in question quotes parliamentary discussion, it is not an opinion. Unless there is a valid reason to believe it is inaccurate there is no reason to mark it as unreliable.Harvey4931 (talk) 00:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Citations Needed

I have added a citation needed tag to the assertion that in SA law may not have been enforced immediately. As noted on Talk by Jake Olivier on 27 Feb 2013, this claim is not substantiated by any analysis or given a citationLinda.m.ward (talk) 03:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The Marshall and White study was cited as the source for a claim of a decrease in the number of people over 15 who cycled at least once a week, from 12.0 per 100 people to 10.4. I could not find these numbers in the Marshall and White study so have added a citation needed tag. Linda.m.ward (talk) 12:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I have tagged 2 occurences of a 250% increase in cycling in Sydney. The citation provided was Robinson's 1996 study, which in turn cited the Ausbike 92 proceedings, which mentioned an RTA report, but did not provide a citation.Linda.m.ward (talk) 09:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

No reference has been cited for a claim of an increase in cycling from 300,000 to 400,000 between 1986 and 1989 in WA, so I have added a citation needed tag. Linda.m.ward (talk) 11:40, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for advocacy or for over-detailed argument

Recent edits have left us with large numbers of claims, counter-claims and counter-counter claims that will leave most readers thoroughly confused. The details of these studies tell us little that is useful for an encyclopedic article, except that there is an ongoing debate.

This does not lead to a clear and informative Wikipedia article. The article has become much more confusing than it was two months ago. To re-balance the article, it might be useful to repeat what we did late last year:

1. Revert to an earlier version, perhaps that of 23rd January.
2. When working further, remind ourselves that we are writing an article in an encyclopedia, for the general reader.

We need to report on the fact of debates, and even very long lists of references may be useful as further reading, but we need to outline the main points of debate rather than rehearse every detail of every argument.Harvey4931 (talk) 23:28, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm against reverting to an earlier version and I think even if reverting received widespread support in the talk page there would be no agreement about which version to revert to. The page as it stands is a bit of a mess but can be redeemed.

I think the key is to agree on same basic guidelines in order to neaten it up. If we can establish an agreed set of rules that all future edits adhere to then there's no reason why we can't maintain the Neutral POV which this article now has (and hasn't enjoyed for a long time) while making the article less intimidating to a first time reader. Both sides of the debate need to accept that this page is never going to become a propaganda page for their own way of thinking and trust that a neutral presentation of the research relating to the issue will back up their side without their own need to editorialise and censor. Dsnmi (talk) 00:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Harvey - I agree with you completely. Some proponents of each side of the debate have put too much of the debate into the article. There's no point to that. Such content would belong in the as yet uncreated article Bicycle helmet debate in Australia. (Which I would rather NOT see created anyway. It would definitely create more heat than light.) Wikipedia is not the place to hold a debate. HiLo48 (talk) 23:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I am totally opposed to any reversion to an earlier version. A lot of effort has gone into this article over the last few months, both in bringing a much more NPOV to it by reflecting all POVs with a better balance, removal of editorialising, and in being much more comprehensive in its reference to the scientific literature (and lots of tidying up of poorly formatted and incomplete references, redundant references etc). The reality is that there is evidence published in reliable sources (scientific journals etc) that helmets protect the head and brain, aren't dangerous and that helmet laws increase helmet wearing and decrease head injuries. The fact that evidence exists must be reflected in the article in the same way that the work of Dorothy Robinson and Bill Curnow is reflected in the article. If some of the scientific literature which is relevant to this article is discussed, then all of it must be discussed in order to maintain a NPOV. Yes, that makes for a rather unencyclopaedic article, difficult, tedious and probably somewhat confusing to read. But NPOV trumps encyclopaedic in WP, I'm afraid. I am in favour of judicious restructuring of the article (discuss in Talk first!) in order to make it read better, and for greater use of footnotes in a balanced and NPOV manner. But hoping for a nice concise summary article is a pipe dream, simply because the range of views of what constitutes "the truth" are so different. What may seem like a fair summary to one person is a totally-biased bunch of misinformation to another. Tim C (talk) 00:05, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

That all seems to ignore my suggestion of a separate article for the debate, if you really must have it on Wikipedia. That would at least leave this article a readable one. HiLo48 (talk) 00:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A separate article for the debate would have to overlap with this one to such an extent that they'd almost duplicate each other. I can't see it solving the problems we currently have trying to edit this page into something more readable. All it would do is create another page like this with a lot of overlapping discussion. Dsnmi (talk) 01:23, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree - article forking just compounds the problem. For example, apart from the main Bicycle helmet article, and this article, there is also a Bicycle helmet laws page which just rehashes some of the material in this article. Creating yet another article would be even worse. Tim C (talk) 01:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd also oppose a fork, indeed I might even support deleting Bicycle helmet laws, what does everyone else think? I do hope soon to present a bold and much more encyclopaedic version of this page, mainly by removing the argumentation (with apologies, but it is giving us an unreadable article), giving only the main heads of debate, and leaving the references. I hope to improve on NPOV too. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Richard, please note that large-scale edits or restructuring of the page need to be agreed upon by consensus (not majority) via this Talk page, allowing a reasonable period for comment. Any edit of the article involving a complete re-write is likely to be reverted because checking and editing a complete re-write imposes an unreasonably large and sudden workload on other editors. Changes need to be made incrementally. That's not to say that changes and re-structuring aren't possible or desirable - but they need to be done section-by-section, and for the larger sections, paragraph-by-paragraph or even sentence-by-sentence, allowing adequate time for response by other editors - at least several days between edits of a paragraph or smaller section. If that sounds like a tedious and slow process, well, I'd agree, but such is the nature of WP. Tim C (talk) 04:11, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll make sure everyone has time to comment first. While this article has improved in important respects it was too detailed previously and has now achieved more or less terminal unreadability. Something bold does need to be done. Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:19, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Some contributors have missed the key issue: an encyclopedia is written for the benefit of readers, by providing a clear, concise, neutral and informative article. However, some helmet advocates seem to place promoting their points of view above that objective.

Helmet advocates seem too eager to quote studies that reinforces their beliefs, without considering the objectivity of the study quoted. For example, studies have been quoted, without disclosing that they were funded by a party with a conflict of interest. Those studies typically use flawed methodologies, resulting in misleading claims not supported by the underlying data. This inevitably leads others to fill in the gaps, pointing out flaws in the study. The resulting set of claims and counterclaims interests few people except avid helmet advocates keen to promote their point of view. The claim that this article has become more neutral after adding misleading studies is incorrect.

Helmet advocates mean well, however their misleading claims and the inevitable rebuttals do not belong in an encyclopedia. We could spend the next few years counter claiming and arguing about misleading claims, or we could revert to an earlier version of the article that is not loaded with misleading claims.

The bottom line is that Wikipedia is not an advocacy platform for people's causes. There are other outlets more appropriate for that.Harvey4931 (talk) 23:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

None of the claims you're making are exclusive to helmet advocates. Studies on both sides can be viewed as flawed and lacking in objectivity. Chris Rissell is a noted and vocal advocate for the repeal of mandatory helmet laws and speaks regularly at anti-helmet rallies. If we're going to remove all non-objective data then anything with Rissell's name on it should definitely be first on the chopping block (especially given his history with data anomolies).

You're correct the bottom line is that Wikipedia shouldn't be an advocacy for people's causes. For a long time this page was exactly that with the anti-helmet group promoting their side of the debate. The only way to maintain any neutral point of view is to present all the information without censoring certain data.

If there are specific surveys or research which are clearly biased, non-objective and totally flawed then they should be brought up in the talk pages where they can be discussed and debated and a consensus reached. If there are clearly misleading claims then name theme here and state a case. Reverting to a previous edit undoes a lot of the hard work that has gone into this page in recent months. We can't sacrifice neutrality for the sake of readibility. Dsnmi (talk) 03:38, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts dnsmi.

Have you noticed the asymmetry between the two sides?

Chris Rissell made a mistake. Upon the mistake being uncovered, he withdrew his claims. Contrast that with the government-funded studies where, despite having been rebutted, the authors of this misleading studies have not withdrawn their claims.

There is also a strong asymmetry in funding. The government has plenty of money to fund studies defending its policies. There are no well-funded vested interests on the cyclists side.

Helmet advocates are exploiting this asymmetry to push their point of view in Wikipedia, quoting misleading studies while trying to silence the rebuttals. It would be disingenuous to claim that cycling activists are using the same tactics.

Harvey4931 (talk) 11:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

No I haven't noticed any asymmetry. Chris Rissell withdrew his paper because it contained numerous data errors and erroneous calculations. I am not aware of any other report cited on this page that is also guilty of the same offence. If there is another paper referenced on this page in which they author has withdrawn their research due to mathematical errors then please point it out and it should be addressed. Government funded studies may have been rebutted but so has every study from both sides. There is a large difference between rebuttal and the author admitting the study is flawed.

I don't believe that because a study has been funded by government it is necessarilly suspect and biased towards helmet law advocacy. I don't beleive that it necessarilly a tenable position. Chris Rissell is definitely on the anti-helmet side of the debate and he seems quite well funded by the university he works for which recieves government funding as well.

I take issue with the term "cycling activists" in this case. There are a huge number of people who consider themselves militant cycling activits who also support mandatory helmet laws. You can't divide this argument into cyclists vs government. It's about helmets and their effectiveness and the law and it's effectiveness, cycling activists sit on both sides of the fence.

It's definitely not disingenous to claim those who are anti-helmets have been attempting to censor the opposing view throughout the course of the life of this page which I've watched for a long time. There was a period when this entire page read like it was lifted verbatim from one of the sites dedicated entirely to discrediting helmets and laws relating to them.

The only way to maintain a neutral point of view is to treat every study equally and to report it's findings in a neutral capacity without editorialising and censorship. This is an attitude that needs to be supported by both sides. Dsnmi (talk) 23:01, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Dsnmi's undo for inappropriate material removal and corrections to reference structure.

User:Dsnmi: The edits I made followed a long discussion on the talk page of Bicycle Helmets as I stated in the editing comment - start at the topic "Ding-dong over describing authors" which continues as "Attribution of articles published by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (BHRF) in this article". Apologies I thought the reference to the topic on the other page would be sufficient for anyone to follow and there was no need to repeat it all here. Many of the same editors of that page have edited this page and some of the same inappropriate attributions - clear violations of normal practice and Wikipedia guidelines - have been added here (not necessarily by the same editors of course). In making the edit I came across a number of structure errors in references (you can see the error messages inserted by Wikipedia in the article) and fixed then, your undo has also put all those errors back. Note that the same cleanup (though there was much less to do) has been done on Bicycle helmets in New Zealand. Kiwikiped (talk) 09:40, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Trying to isolate one issue so we can try to gain consensus, I have inserted a link to the page of the editorial board rather than a long list of members inappropriately described as authors. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

That is incorrect. At no stage were the BHRF Editorial Board members listed as authors - if you examine the edits I made you will see the names were added to the editors= attribute of the reference template, and when rendered appear as a list with a clear {Eds) after them: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bicycle_helmets_in_Australia&diff=552806674&oldid=552639482 It is apparently unacceptable to you to be named as an editor responsible for referenced BHRF content for which no author is named. Tim C (talk) 12:45, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The editorial board page is there precisely to make clear the names of the editorial board (not quite the same thing as individual editors). The point is that a long list of names is un-necessary clutter. Indeed if I'd added it I would expect it to be removed on the grounds of clutter and self-advertisement. Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Richard Keatinge & Tim C - The cleanup I did is exactly the same as performed on the Bicycle Helmets page after the long Talk thread there which both of you will have seen. The only problem here is a misunderstanding I created by not describing the reasons behind the edit enough, hence User:Dsnmi's undo to what looked like a massive edit out of the blue - so mea culpa, apologies again.

There is no need to start this again, we've all had enough of the merry-go-round. Richard unless you object I will later undo your edit and redo mine - simply as the two will undoubtedly conflict. If either of you then feel there is some special case why the same standards should not apply to this page as the Bicycle Helmets one and the rest of Wikipedia then that can be discussed. Kiwikiped (talk) 18:43, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Removal of inappropriate material now restored, along with the fixing of the other structural errors. (If anybody wonders why the character counts don't match it is (a) I think I missed one item first time around and (b) I spotted a strange activity termed "ycling" :-) so I fixed that as well). Apologies again for causing this misunderstanding. Kiwikiped (talk) 01:49, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Dihn's Letter to the Editor

I watched as one POV added Dihn's recent Letter to the Editor, followed by the other POV adding balancing material (from their POV), etc. yet nobody mentioned it was actually a Letter to the Editor, not a peer-reviewed published study... Am I wrong, are Letters to the MJA peer-reviewed? And then one side edited a reference adding during this time to make it clear it was a Letter, yet still restraint from the other size and Dihn's remains a "study" with the clear implication it is a peer-review publication in the MJA. Maybe I am wrong, but as far as I can see the Dihn reference is just a letter. Frankly I think this article is going (or has gone) the way of the main Bicycle Helmets one - far too long and unreadable - and all the stuff added by both POV's around the Dihn Letter could just go and the article would probably be better. However as a compromise I announce my intention to go in and make sure it is clear this is a Letter to the Editor, pending the response to this Talk item - unless of course whoever added (I can't remember) it would like to do that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiwikiped (talk • contribs) 03:51, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you are wrong. Please see the section titled "Letter" at https://www.mja.com.au/journal/mja-instructions-authors-types-articles-published-mja It clearly says: "Research letters are peer reviewed." The Dinh et al. article is clearly a research letter, because it describes and reports on original research. A "letter" in older established medical journals such as the MJA is the equivalent of a "brief communication" or "short paper" in other journals. It is just a quaint tradition to refer to them as "letters". Tim C (talk) 05:47, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I suspected this might be the case, but when I looked missed that. But still not sure I posted here first, thanks for the reference Tim. Probably be clearer in the article to refer to it as a Letter, as that is what it is, and in the reference to comma separate the two pages numbers (if it was 3 pages long it wouldn't be a Letter), but that's just my POV :-) Kiwikiped (talk) 11:18, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

It is referred to in the article as a study, which is what it is. The page numbers given in the reference are correct as they are. Tim C (talk) 12:41, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

As I said, that was my POV, which was my way of saying that I wasn't going to make those edits. But I am a little curious (or mischievous :-)), how many non-article intervening pages are required before a page range becomes a list of pages? (Take that as rhetorical.) Kiwikiped (talk) 19:05, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

You might be better off continuing your rhetorical rumination on the Talk page of this article: Pagination Tim C (talk) 21:29, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of some material from the section "Health implications of bicycle helmets legislation"

User:Drmies has deleted some material from the section "Health implications of bicycle helmets legislation", with the edit note of "none of this content pertains to the content. if you wish to argue that helmet laws lead to more bicycle use and thus more health--well, that's probably OR [original research])"

This post to Talk is not to take issue with the edit made - it is a useful pruning of the article, in my view. Rather it is just to note that I don't think any researcher or anyone else has ever suggested that bicycle helmet laws lead to more bicycle use. There is quite a lot of contention over whether bicycle helmet laws reduce cycling levels long-term, and if so, by how much, and the degree of any short- or long-term effects on various age groups etc. Unfortunately the available data on these questions is far from conclusive either way and the real picture is probably quite complex, and almost certainly varies from country to country. Related questions are: if helmet laws and/or helmet promotion do in fact reduce cycling, is the reduction in health (remembering that cycling is not the only form of exercise possible) significant and does it outweigh benefits due to reduced head injuries etc? Almost every aspect of these questions is contended, and for some aspects, there is a complete lack of research at the moment. Tim C (talk) 02:08, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• Well, the matter is quite simple. There are two possible health benefits. a. wearing helmets makes people ride bikers and bikers live longer or something like that. b. wearing helmets makes you live longer if you have a crash. (or, just as bad, c. mandating helmets will make people ride bikes less and thus kills them sooner since non-bikers are unhealthier than bikers.) The first one strikes me as trivial--it would suggest a section "Health implications of X" for almost every article X, possibly including The Man in the Moone The second is...well, duh, to be handled in a few sentences. As for that research, or its lack--I don't see how that is a matter that needs to concern us here. Drmies (talk) 15:05, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
  • WP is supposed to reflect current knowledge, and research, or in some cases a lack of it, is of central concern to us here. I agree, that research does not need to be described in excruciating detail in the article, but editors of the article MUST be familiar with it, or how else will they determine current knowledge and scientific thinking on the subject? Tim C (talk) 20:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
    • I disagree. If a reliable source is available that summarises the studies then we should use that. We do not have to be bang up to date and the level of detail is indeed excruciating. This is bike helmets we're talking of here, so a sense of proportion might be applicable. - Sitush (talk) 21:27, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
      • Just clarifying something here, and it is most definitely an opinion. WP is intended to be an encyclopedia that anyone can edit but I see the other side of that coin as being an encyclopedia that anyone can read. It should be possible to make articles such as this accessible to the average reader but as things are at present it is mostly statistical gibberish. I was fortunate enough to undertake a post-grad course in statistical methods etc but I'm struggling with the detail that we are showing here. I'm pretty sure that most of it is unnecessary and unhelpful to the average reader. Maybe I am misunderstanding our purpose but I suspect not. - Sitush (talk) 01:39, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

My prune

I've just removed a lot of content from the History section. This entire article needs to be trimmed by about 80-90% and probably merged with another article. In its present state, it is absolutely ridiculous content for an encyclopaedia: far too detailed, and in particular far too reliant on contested studies and indeed studies, period. If people want to have an in-depth about the merits or otherwise of various studies and pieces of legislation then please go do it somewhere else. - Sitush (talk) 13:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree that this article needs massive pruning but I don't think it needs to be merged with another article. The laws and situation in Australia are unique and I believe worthy of an article of their own. It's especially relevant since there isn't any other place on the internet which attempts to provide a fair and unbiased view of this contentious subject.

I think in fairness all studies probably need to be included (even though there are a lot of them) but I agree entirely that they don't need to be debated and discussed on this page. I think a study should be included with its findings and conclusion quoted directly and then all further discussion about that study's flaws, omissions and issues taken somewhere else. We run into problems if we start getting selective with which studies we include. Some studies back up one side of the argument and others back up the other and if we choose which ones we think are valid and which ones aren't we abandon the neutral point of view and start giving unequal weighting to one side.

It would be great if this was a quick and concise summary of the situation but if we're going to preserve the neutrality it has to be complicated by its very nature. Not as complicated as it is currently but it will definitely be a large and unwieldy article if it's going to fairly address both sides of the debate Dsnmi (talk) 01:35, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree entirely. As Einstein's Razor notes: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." It is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But yes, there is a lot of very dirty bathwater in this article that can safely go down the plughole. Tim C (talk) 01:57, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Helmet law and the situation is unique to Australia? Really? Why is that not in the lead section? All studies should not be included: we are not qualified to assess them and the devil is in their detail, not their conclusions. Since most of the studies currently mentioned are not even studying within the same parameters, we are asking the reader to compare chalk with cheese. It is pointless. As I said before, if someone wants to write an precise of the studies etc then they should do so elsewhere and maybe see if an academic journal will publish the thing. Here, people should be able to see more of the wood and less of the trees. - Sitush (talk) 08:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Australia is one of only two nations in the world to have compulsory helmet laws throughout (so I believe). America is one of many countries that has capital punishment but it has a unique page for US capital punishment laws because the specific legislation and it's impact is worth discussing. The same thing applies here. If we decide not to discuss all studies and instead focus on a selection then I'd like to know how we determine which are the relevant studies and which are not. How do you determine which are the necessary studies to make this article worthwhile and which aren't? As soon as you delete a study that supports helmets you've taken sides in the debate and this article has lost it's neutrality. It would be futile anyway because there is no way to prevent one person from adding detail that another decides shouldn't be included. We'd be adding and deleting studies on a daily basis. Dsnmi (talk) 08:23, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah, so Australia is not unique and, of course, helmets are very noticeable in countries where they are not compulsory. We can always show no studies at all, or just provide a table listing the things - List of studies examining the impact of bicycle helmet legislation or some such. If people start disruptively adding/deleting studies without consensus then we get the article protected.

Since you are familiar with the article subject and seem to accept that it has excessive detail, perhaps you could start to remove it? Be bold. - Sitush (talk) 08:32, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not unique but it is one of two countries in which helmets have been made mandatory. It is also (as this article notes) the main reference point for other nation's discussions about mandatory helmet legislation. It's an area in which the rest of the world looks to Australia and it needs to be discussed. If this page was deleted then the page on helmet laws would become so bloated with information on Australia there would be people suggesting it became a separate page within a month.

I've considered jumping in and being bold but this page has a very contentious history and I don't want to step on anyone else's toes. I have actually done quite major edit to clean this up a long time ago and deleted all editorial comments about studies. That didn't last long at all.

I don't know how we would make this article in any way relevant without focusing in some way on studies that have been conducted on the subject. This page would need to talk about the legislation, it's effectiveness at preventing injuries and it's impact on riding numbers. We can't ignore the work of scientists who have studied exactly this and published their findings. I'm all for simplifying the page by listing studies, quoting their findings and removing any editorial comments and criticisms from the site altogether and letting every study stand on its own merits. Dsnmi (talk) 09:13, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Once again, I agree with User:Dsnmi. All relevant studies and papers that have been published in recognised peer-reviewed journals should be included, otherwise there is potential for bias, and the allegations of non-NPOV editing will start. I propose the following criteria and rules:

• Only studies and papers published in recognised peer-reviewed journals. "Recognised" means the journal or publication is indexed in Medline/PubMed, or Scopus, or one of the other scholarly indexing databases (as opposed to search engines such as Google Scholar or CiteSeer or similar).
• Only studies and papers about cycling helmets in Australia to be included
• Critiques of papers and studies which are not peer-reviewed content of recognised journals or publications should be excluded, in the interests of brevity and readability.
• Each study or paper should only be referenced in the article a few times at most, ideally just once, to avoid the situation in which certain papers are cited repeatedly throughout the article.
• Authors or research groups who have published several papers should be named as the author in the text, so that the reader is aware whose published views are being quoted, and avoiding or mitigating the undue-influence problem.

If we stick to those rules, the article will be a lot more readable, and avoid bias. In essence, journal editors and peer-reviewers will have decided what facts and views are worthy of inclusion, not random WP editors. Tim C (talk) 09:58, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree. These strike me as workable guidelines and if adhered to will produce a much more reliable page that will strike a balance between neutrality and readability. Dsnmi (talk) 01:52, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Robinson source

Can someone please give me the page numbers from the Robinson study that have caused us to write Before the law was enforced in Queensland, bicycle travel represented about 2.3% of total vehicle kilometres; after the helmet law was enforced in 1993, bicycle offence notices increased to 7.9% of traffic offence notices, implying that per kilometre, bicycle offence notices were about four times higher than all other traffic offences put together - speeding, drink-driving, not wearing seatbelts, careless driving or riding, etc. It is 13 pages of pretty dense statistics but at first glance what I am seeing is someone drawing their own conclusions from a source. - Sitush (talk) 18:11, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

To which paper by Dorothy Robinson are you referring? Tim C (talk) 20:57, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The one that is used as a source for that statement. It is 13 pages of stuff rather similar to our own article, ie: stats galore. - Sitush (talk) 21:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Second paragraph, right-hand column, page 472 of the paper. However, I would seriously question the utility of comparisons of "traffic offences per kilometre" between different modes of travel - I suspect that "jaywalking" infringements for pedestrians might also be rather high using that metric, simply because pedestrians tend to travel less far by foot than drivers do by car, or cyclists by bike etc. I've never seen the "infringements per kilometre" which Robinson calculates used anywhere else. Also, these data are from 1988 and 1993 in Queensland - that's over two decades ago. Do they really deserve space in an encyclopedia article? Tim C (talk) 22:11, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Lies and statisics

The first paragraph of the section titled Bicycle_helmets_in_Australia#Surveys_of_helmet_use_and_cycling_participation_before_and_after_the_introduction_of_helmet_laws seems to be a waste of space. Some guys conducted a study, came up with some numbers and said that there was a statistical problem because of a rally that was taking place but that excluding the rally element from the results would itself create a statistical problem (presumably, one related to size of the poopulation, chi-square tests etc). The figures that we show are for 1991 but at the end of the paragraph we show a re-analysis of that study, done by someone else and excluding the very thing that the original researchers said could not be excluded for statistical reasons. The figure given there is for 1992. So, we are comparing chalk and cheese (different years) and we are also getting involved in an academic argument regarding statistical viability. If the figures are not viable then we should not be showing them at all. The gist of it all seems to be that the number of cyclists in this small-scale study fell by maybe 27% or maybe a bit more, so surely it is acceptable for us to cut that entire paragraph, replacing with something like Analysis of data collected over the years 1990-1992 in Melbourne suggests that the number of cyclists fell by somewhere between 27% and XX%., where XX is whatever Finch's 1992 figure may be. We don't need all the numbers that are presently shown. - Sitush (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, pretty much the entire article can be summarised as "Studies of cycling at various places and times in Australia, both before and after the introduction of helmet legislation, vary widely in their conclusions. There are ongoing academic debates regarding the various statistical methods selected, the effect that natural events such as weather conditions have on the results and the impact of such considerations on the conclusions drawn with regard to levels of participation in cycling and the nature of injuries arising from it." If anyone thinks this saga will end in the next ten years, and maybe more, then they know noting about statistics.

Reasonably succinct summaries of the Victorian and NSW helmet wearing and cycling surveys done before and after the introduction of the helmet laws can be found at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2012/02/26/do-mandatory-helmets-discourage-cycling/ and http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2012/04/02/did-mandatory-helmets-kill-cycling-in-nsw/ (references to those web pages were in the article). Tim C (talk) 20:43, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Crikey indeed! Is that a reliable source? Most blogs are not and I have no idea of the reputation of The Urbanist. - Sitush (talk) 21:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

You can see a bit more about Alan Davies here: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/about/ Crikey is a well-respected media outlet in Australia - despite its name, it contains serious content and analysis of Australian politics, the economy, social issues etc written by professional journalists and professionally edited. The Urbanist is one of several blogs hosted by Crikey - they aren't personal blogs, they are part of the Crikey masthead and under Crikey editorial oversight. If you look at the material covered in Davies blog, you can see that it is all serious stuff, covering a wide range of urban issues, not just cycling, and definitely not just helmets. In summary, Davies is a professional, post-doctoral geographer who publishes carefully written commentaries in a professionally edited blog under the masthead of a respected commercial media outlet in Australia. His summaries of the available Victorian and NSW surveys are the best I've found, and make it clear that the message to be drawn is more complex and nuanced that just "helmet laws caused a 30% drop in cycling participation" as is asserted in so many places, nor can the message be that introduction of cycling laws had no effect on cycling participation. Tim C (talk) 21:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Actions on 31 May

On 31 May a number of changes were made, mainly deletions. The process seems inappropriate in that to undue would probably require some time.

• (cur | prev) 18:59, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (75,349 bytes) (-232)‎ . . (→‎Injury rates: pedestrians/motorists are not relevant) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 18:15, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (75,581 bytes) (-596)‎ . . (→‎Bicycle usage: changes without concurrent control groups around the time of helmet compulsion: this is inference again - you have no idea whether helmets impacted on these figures) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 18:03, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (76,177 bytes) (-112)‎ . . (→‎Enforcement, fines and legal aspects of compulsory helmet use: fix repetition) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 18:00, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (76,289 bytes) (-577)‎ . . (→‎Enforcement, fines and legal aspects of compulsory helmet use: what the heck has New Zealand got to do with this?) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 17:35, 31 May 2013‎ LadyofShalott (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (76,866 bytes) (-12)‎ . . (→‎Public attitude to helmets: Quotes should not be italicized.) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 17:32, 31 May 2013‎ LadyofShalott (talk | contribs)‎ . . (76,878 bytes) (-61)‎ . . (→‎Enforcement, fines and legal aspects of compulsory helmet use: minor cleanup/copyedit) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 15:06, 31 May 2013‎ Drmies (talk | contribs)‎ . . (76,939 bytes) (+34)‎ . . (Added tag to article (TW)) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 13:29, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (76,905 bytes) (-5,354)‎ . . (→‎Injury rates: no! this is about helmets in *Australia*, not issues relating to helmets generally - wrong article) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 13:25, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (82,259 bytes) (-747)‎ . . (→‎Injury rates: this article is not about head injuries related to road accidents: focus, please) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 13:24, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (83,006 bytes) (-1,336)‎ . . (→‎Surveys of helmet use and cycling participation before and after the introduction of helmet laws: am sure they have, but so what? we do our own summarising) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 13:22, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (84,342 bytes) (-5,504)‎ . . (→‎Bicycle usage: trends before and after helmet compulsion: remove: article is not about cycling in Australia & tying these stats into it amounts to an inference relating to helmets) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 13:18, 31 May 2013‎ AnomieBOT (talk | contribs)‎ . . (89,846 bytes) (+378)‎ . . (Rescuing orphaned refs ("RobinsonDL1996" from rev 557627921; "ReferenceB" from rev 557627921)) (undo)
• (cur | prev) 13:03, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (89,468 bytes) (-759)‎ . . (→‎History: remove: the article is problematic enough without having unsourced claims in it) (undo | thank)
• (cur | prev) 12:56, 31 May 2013‎ Sitush (talk | contribs)‎ . . (90,227 bytes) (-10,034)‎ . . (→‎History: big pruning: I am aware of concerns about this article, which is in a ridiculous state at present) (undo | thank)

~~Colin at cycling~~

It would take little time at all to undo what has gone on. But it would be a poor decision to do so. This article is very poor and it is not just the people you list who have said so. - Sitush (talk) 20:08, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Richard Keatinge, User:Harvey4931 and others have expressed concerns many times that this and related articles on bicycle helmets contain far too much detail, and have become unreadable and unencyclopaedic as a result. I share these concerns, although as User:Dsnmi has said, the whole issue of bicycle helmets (anywhere) is complex and messy, and contentious, and thus a very succinct article that is still accurate and unbiassed is probably unachievable. But it should be possible to go a long way towards that goal. Anyway, it would appear that the wished-for process of pruning the article and removing unnecessary detail has begun. I intend to let the process take its course, and when finished, if any really vital material has been removed, then it can be judiciously restored. But so far, the pruning seems useful and has improved the article. Tim C (talk) 00:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Certainly, I am doing some pruning but I can't resolve all of the seemingly-obvious issues without input from others. I know nothing about the subject matter and am approaching it as a "regular reader" who just happens to be familiar with quite a few of en-Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and is, well, not stupid but not a professional statistician either. And the major problems with this article seem to revolve around its treatment of statistical issues. Over the last 24 hours or so there have been two people commenting here who seem to agree that there is a problem and that various unnamed things could be omitted. Perhaps they should either be bold and make those cuts but if they are not so inclined then they should at least give some specific examples.

My understanding via a recent report at WP:ANI is that this article may also be subject to conflicts of interest etc - it might be best if the regular contributors at least declare their position if there is any possibility of a COI. To that end, I will say that I am a Brit, have never been to Australia and, although I once cycled extensively and thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm long since past even being able to get on a bike - too many screws, plates and pins in my leg (due to a non-cycling incident). - Sitush (talk) 00:38, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

The report at ANI - see details here - was about ongoing personal attacks on an editor (me) alleging bias and undeclared COIs, when all my potential COIs with respect to this and other related bicycle helmet pages were set out explicitly on my profile page at User:Tim.churches soon after I began editing these articles a few months ago (and in any case, I use my real name here, so COIs with respect to papers and article I have co-authored are obvious). Obviously personal attacks, or even comments, about editors are against WP policy - you can only discuss the merits of edits, and of content, but not the merits or otherwise of editors (well, you can praise editors, but you are not allowed to attack them, criticise them as persons, impugn their integrity etc). I have urged several other frequent editors of this and related pages to also declare any COIs they might have with respect to papers and articles cited here (COIs such as being the author of those cited papers), but with nil or evasive responses. I find that frustrating, but apparently it is not WP policy to require such COIs to be declared - it is purely voluntary. Anyway, I have declared mine, and I urge others to do likewise, even if purely in the negative, as in "I have no COIs with respect to this article nor any of the papers or other material discussed or cited in it." Tim C (talk) 01:02, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks to User:Sitush for braving the swamp and taking the time to remove so much noxious over-growth, and inspiring others to do the same. There is still more weed removal to be done, but the prunings of the the past few days (by various editors) have already transformed the article into a MUCH better quality product than it has ever been before.

I have made a number of additions to the helmet article/s, I wish to declare that I have no COIs with respect to this article, nor any of the papers or other material discussed or cited in it (as noted on my user page, I am a biostatistician at a health research organisation that does not engage in any helmet-related activities). Linda.m.ward (talk) 11:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Excess stats

I have been reverted here. We say that Robinson criticised something because it ignored similar trends found in pedestrians. The figures that have been reinstated are unnecessary stats: they add nothing to the statement that is of significance.

Look,folks, we really, really need to make this article more accessible and it is not being helped by throwing all these stats around. I get the impression that a fair few of the major contributors are professional statisticians etc and they may be unaware of just how daunting it is for the average reader to comprehend such a mass of figures. - Sitush (talk) 11:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree there's far too much detail. Editors have tended to focus on tiny detail like the census stats for one city (usually Melbourne), or trot out the stats for every single city (but ignore the rest of the country despite the much higher cycling rates in regional areas) when the bigger picture of what happened in the entire country is far more important. I reverted the information on pedestrian injuries (until we get some consensus here), because the comment said that changes for pedestrians weren't relevant, even though there was a 75% reduction in pedestrian concussions. On the other had, the next sentence "In 2013, Vicroads reported "Two years after the legislation was introduced, there was a 16% reduction in head injuries in metropolitan Melbourne and 23% reduction in head injuries throughout Victoria".[20]" is confusing in that most readers won't realise it applies to all road users. There are many examples like this that need to be fixed up or deleted. Dorre (talk) 12:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Forget the edit summary and concentrate on the edit itself because edit summaries are just that, a summary in a limited amount of space. Prior to your revert, the article said Robinson criticised this study on the grounds that it ignored the similar trends for pedestrians. You reinstated detail relating to that which is not needed - we'll have enough stats about cyclists without adding detailed stats about pedestrians. The pre-revert statement adequately reflects what you said in your criticism (you are Dorre Robinson, aren't you?). - Sitush (talk) 13:07, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Dorre made a statement about her conflicts of interest at Talk:Bicycle_helmet/Archive_4#Conflicts_of_interest. Tim C (talk) 00:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In that case, Dorre is a potentially misleading name for a WP:SPA account because a person called Dorre Robinson does much more than just "cycle for transport". I'll probably raise the issue at UAA or COIN when I get home. - Sitush (talk) 06:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

This is difficult. For any scientific analysis the experience of the control group - the pedestrians - is fundamental and leaving it out is clearly and absurdly POV. On the other hand, we do have far too much detailed argument here. We need to tell the story simply, with minimal figures, but we certainly don't need deletion of the major part of the argument. So long as we have detailed argumentation - not much longer I hope - we do need both sides. Richard Keatinge (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I do not understand this at all. Robinson notes that there were similar trends for pedestrians - there is no need for the stats to reinforce a point that has already been made. And please do not accuse me of POV as, by the looks of things, I'm practically the only person involved here who has absolutely no connection with the topic area. - Sitush (talk) 15:40, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

As an aside to the initial point of this thread, Dorre and Richard Keatinge both seem to agree that there are too many stats. Why not do something about it, then? I realise that one of you (Richard) and probably both have conflicts of interest here but you could at least explain exactly which stats you mean and propose changes here. - Sitush (talk) 15:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I have been watching the current flood of edits in the hope that both sides would eventually see the error of their ways; my off-Wiki consultants (family and friends) agree that the article has become unreadable with a rash of statistics which no normal reader will plough through. My Wiki time has been limited of late and I have not felt inclined to argue about the overdose of additions (often accurate and cumulatively probably helping NPOV, but in aggregate hopelessly un-encyclopaedic). I hope to see, or possibly be involved in, a major rewrite so that this article again becomes attractive and readable for the encyclopaedic reader.

You may well be the only editor with no prior connection / opinion! I, for example, was an early adopter of bicycle helmets and quite enthusiastic about them until the evidence started to come out. Just to make it clear, I have a long-term interest in the subject and a relevant qualification (in epidemiology), but I don't have any conflict of interest at all. In fact my life would be somewhat easier if I were to drop NPOV and go along with a certain POV. And I'm sure you and others are doing your best to achieve NPOV. I do appreciate your help and I hope that you are willing to assist with the rewrite that this article needs. What it doesn't need is bits trimmed off in such a way that, if any reader were to get so far, would leave them with an inaccurate and POV impression. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:21, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Richard's declaration that he "[does not] have any conflict of interest at all" notwithstanding, other editors do need to be aware that User:Richard Keatinge is one of two listed Directors of the Bicycle Helmets Research Foundation (BHRF) (see http://www.companieslist.co.uk/04864151-the-bicycle-helmet-research-foundation ) and is listed as being on its Editorial Board. Previous WP discussion of the BHRF can be found at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_146#Bicycle_Helmet_Research_Foundation. Tim C (talk) 22:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

If you are referring to the Robinson pedestrian statistics, please explain why removal of the detail makes the article POv-slanted; if you are referring more generally, please elaborate where I am exhibiting POV. If you can find a diff of the article at its previously optimum state then I'd appreciate it: I'm not afraid to do a restore to that version if needs must because everyone seems to be agreeing that it is a mess now. - Sitush (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but no, its previous state wasn't optimum and I doubt if a revert would command consensus, a lot of people have a stake in the recent changes. In a smaller way it still had too many statistics and it wasn't clear enough, and on balance the recent flood may have improved NPOV. In my judgement we need a rewrite.

No, to repeat, I'm confident you're doing your best with NPOV in a very difficult area. I apologize if I have given any other impression. The specific edit reverted here removed information on a control group which is essential to interpret the facts. We may not need any of that particular sentence in a rewritten version (the concept is important but the detail isn't), but we don't need part of it, shorn of an essential detail. We are better off with a more complete version of the sentence for the moment. Richard Keatinge (talk) 17:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I still don't see why the detail is important now. I also note that we seem to be comparing chalk with cheese in that paragraph. MUARC analysis showed a 23% and 28% reduction in the number of bicyclists killed or admitted to hospital who did not sustain head injuries in the first and second post-law years, respectively." but Robinson criticised this study on the grounds that it ignored the similar trends for pedestrians, in particular that numbers of pedestrians with concussion fell by 29% and 75% in the first and second years after the introduction of the bicycle helmet law in Victoria. Concussion is not death and it is not all types of head injury. I'm not wading through the two sources right now but either Robinson is was not comparing like with like (which would be their problem) or we are misrepresenting one or both of the sources. I suspect the latter, and removing the excess detail would also have the effect of removing the misrepresentation, if that is what it is. - Sitush (talk) 17:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

The site gives readers an insight into the problems, claims were made of a 70% reduction but 3 years later in the Monash report they claimed they could not tell if the reductions were due to less cycling or helmets and by 2013 Vic roads claim a reduction of 23%. Including info on pedestrians helps readers to appreciate the level of changes occurring. The primary purpose is to reflect information, if easy to read great, but the detail is important. Bearing in mind if the reduction of 23% is lower than the reduction in cycling activity, the risk per person increases. The information provided reflects various reports and provides a sort of balance. To evaluate them on wiki appears to be heading for original research. Colin at cycling (talk) 20:11, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

You've avoided my query and points again. I'm not a stupid person and if I cannot fathom out what is going on in the article then the average reader will not. As I've said before, if anyone wants to write an academic summary then they are free to do so, but not here. If we are comparing apples and oranges/chalk and cheese then we are doing the reader a dis-service, especially if they are ill-equipped to wade through all this crap and merely speed-read it. - Sitush (talk) 20:36, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I was maybe a bit hasty, but concerned that the following sentence: 'In 2013, Vicroads reported "Two years after the legislation was introduced, there was a 16% reduction in head injuries in metropolitan Melbourne and 23% reduction in head injuries throughout Victoria".[20]', would then have been interpreted as applying to cyclists, rather than all road users. The following sentence 'Road safety improved substantially with deaths reducing from 776 in 1989 to 396 in 1992.[21]' also needed to be edited to make it clear the numbers refer to all road users in Victoria. I would also question the need to report the effect of the law in the first 2 years, when there was a follow-up study showing no effect of the law in the third year, and then a study over 4 years. These are explained immediately below the text we are discussing.

"Newstead et al. 1994 provided details of TAC claims (from motor vehicle/cyclist accidents) with the percentage reduction in severe bicyclist casualties relative to the 1989/90 financial year. For Melbourne bicyclists without head injuries fell by 4% and 12% for the years 1990/91 and 1991/92.[22] Clarke asserted that, because the Melbourne helmet wearing surveys reported reductions in generally cycling of 36%, compared to the reported 4% and 12% reductions in non-head injury rates in cyclists, this indicates that accident involvement increased by 37% to 50%.[9]

"A final MUARC report on the helmet law in Victoria (published in 1995) reported that after taking into account changes in the funding arrangements for publicly funded hospitals, cyclist non-head injuries dropped by about 25%, and serious and severe cyclist head/brain injuries dropped by 40%.[23] The report noted improvements to road safety and increased availability of bicycle paths. They mention "we were unable to include any reliable measures of exposure, and thus it is impossible to distinguish between reductions due to helmet wearing and reductions solely due to possible reductions in exposure".

Given the above, I was a bit concerned over the whole string of sudden changes (that I hadn't seen before), and that the whole section needed to be fixed up, rather than just removing one bit with the justification that pedestrians weren't relevant. Dorre (talk) 23:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to propose a rewrite of the entire paragraph, hopefully based on the concept that less is more! I did some big cuts and am now wandering around excising smaller pieces while I get a better feel for the various positions etc. I deal more with history-related stuff than with current subjects but, as a general rule, new research from respected academics (who are presumed to have digested the prior research) will always carry more weight. That, of course, makes the assumption that those academics are impartial and in the context of history it can, for example, lead to odd outcomes unless the contributor is aware that X or Y is a Marxist historian or similar. Doubtless, the same fundamental issues will exist here. - Sitush (talk) 23:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

If I were to re-write the paragraph, I would start with WA because the graph shows the trends for all road users. By explaining this first, the 2-year, 3-year and 4-year studies in Victoria can be explained more simply and concisely. Is there general approval to do this? Dorre (talk) 00:46, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

If you mean the graph that is disputed in the section above or any other based directly on census data then no, I do not approve of it because you don't know why the figures have changed. You can't use primary data to infer something that is not said explicitly, and I'm becoming fed up of repeating myself as much as, I am sure, you are becoming fed up of reading it. - Sitush (talk) 05:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I meant the graph showing the trends in percent head injury to all road users - cyclists, pedestrians & motor vehicle occupants in Western Australia. Dorre (talk) 05:43, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

You cannot extrapolate from one region to an entire country unless a reliable source has done so. If there is such a source then that is what should be used. Adding info about a single state when similar info is not available for other states using the same criteria amounts to excess weight, although it would likely be fine if you wanted to create an article about, say, travel-related head injuries in Western Australia. You certainly could not use any summary based on that graph to explain the situation in Victoria. Honestly, people here are completely misunderstanding how Wikipedia works: it is not a perfect environment for the dissemination of knowledge and we have to reflect sources very closely, whereas academic papers can spread the net more widely. - Sitush (talk) 06:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

You're absolutely right about extrapolation. Giving a concise graphical presentation of what happened to ridership or head injuries in relation to helmet laws in Australia (or Western Australia alone if that's what's available, but more comprehensive is better), based on a thoroughly reliable source, strikes me as so obviously useful to this article that I am still puzzled by calls for its removal. Coming back to your earlier points in this section, no we don't need all the detail now or indeed ever, but we really don't need half a point pruned to leave only the other half. Getting rid of the lot might be defensible, and getting rid of the present verbiage and giving a nice neat account of the whole story would be really good. Richard Keatinge (talk) 08:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Showing figures just for WA is undue when the article concerns the entire country/continent. I do not understand your puzzlement but I'm beginning to think that the solution here is simply to remove everything that exists subsequent to the section explaining the law. There is far too much POv, there are far too many dubious statistics and there is far too much comparison of apples and oranges. Sure, if sources do not agree then we can reflect the alternate opinions but if sources are disagreeing based on parallel datasets rather than common datasets then any such comparison is worthless in the Wikipedia context. - Sitush (talk) 09:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Just to set the record straight, my comments were not intended to imply any extrapolation from WA to the rest of the country. The aim was to show that the existence of trends in the WA data that are common to all WA road users. Having established that, the casual reader is more likely to understand what a trend is, and therefore the totally independent research and references to trends in Victoria. I was not suggesting anything radical, simply re-ordering what is already there to make it easier for the average reader to follow. However, you seem to be arguing that you can't show a graph for WA without showing identical data for other states. That would be a tall order and conflict with your desire for brevity. Biases can be created by omitting relevant, neutrally presented information. I would have thought that readers want some information to help them make sense of the conflicting POV. The important issue is to agree on how to report it simply and with a NPOV. If the problem is that the article refers to the whole country, then perhaps creating sub-headings for the different states could avoid the problem of anyone possibly misinterpreting it as an intention to refer to the whole country? Dorre (talk) 09:56, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

That WA graph should go (there are already 2 mentions in the text of similar trends for cyclists and other road users). Linda.m.ward (talk) 08:13, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd strongly suggest keeping the graph, which is a much better presentation of more and better-sourced information, but getting rid of the other mentions if needed for clarity. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Many casual readers don't know what a trend is and would have difficulty understanding the meaning of text about "similar trends in percent head injury for all road users." However, when they see the graph a lot more people will be able to understand. I don't think it will be possible to successfully simplify the article without such illustrations. Dorre (talk) 10:29, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

"Vandalism" by addition

That sensational title is one way of summarizing the changes to this (and the bicycle helmets) page over the past several months. So much detail has been added that it's impossible to see the wood for the trees. Most casual readers are not interested in what happened in individual states, or cities within individual states, but the effect on the whole country. However, it's very difficult for a single editor to delete this additional material without being accused of vandalism. Consider, for example the long and detailed description of the weather in the Melbourne survey where 2011 cyclists were counted in 1991:

"Although surveys conducted on weekdays had similar weather, there appears to have been some differences for counts conducted on weekends. About 32% of weekend observations in the pre-law survey were affected by rain, compared with about half in 1991 but only 14% in 1992. Counts in 1992 were also inflated by a bicycle rally passing through one of the sites in 1992. Finch et al. noted that from a statistical point of view, it would not be valid to exclude that site.[10] (Excluding the site would have excluded cyclists who would have been cycling anyway, but through a different site, had it not been for the rally.) A study by Robinson that re-analysed the data from the Finch study, excluding the site with the rally, concluded that 27% fewer cyclists were counted in 1992 than 1990.[11]"

Most people would agree that there's not a great deal of difference between 27% and 36%, and that the detailed description of the weather isn't too important because the pre-law weather was about the same as the average for the 2 post-law years (slightly better in 92, slightly worse in 91). So why all the complicated detail? A cynic would say that it's to hide the relevant information about numbers counted and helmet wearing. Pre-law, 1293 teenagers were counted, of which 272 wore helmets. A year later, 670 teenagers were counted, of which 302 wore helmets. The insightful comparison of the drop in teenage cycling (632 fewer teenage cycling) with the the increase of 30 in the number of teenagers wearing helmets gets lost because of the long and detailed discussion of the weather.
The small numbers observed in these surveys contrasts with the 100,000 people cycling to work on census day in 2011. Cycling is seasonal, so surveys taken at the same time of year generally have the same weather and are comparable. Comparing the results of surveys taken at different times of year (e.g. the pre and post-law survey of adults in NSW) is generally a lot less reliable. The graphs of the census data is important because provides a reasonably consistent series from 1976 to 2011 for the whole country, illustrating the difference between trends unrelated to helmet wearing and the effect of helmet laws. This simply cannot be put into words.
This article's problems were compounded by the addition of new sections that effectively duplicated existing ones. For example,'Surveys of helmet use and cycling participation', effectively repeats (with many additional details to) the information that was in an existing section 'Bicycle usage: changes without concurrent control groups around the time of helmet compulsion'. Such edits added to the repetition, making the article longer and unreadable. The last time the article was pruned, there was consensus on the talk page to go back to the version as at Nov 28, 2012. Because the current article is so confusing and difficult to read, anyone who wants to prune it should consider reading that version and then see what additional material is relevant and informative. This might provide sufficient insight to help distinguish the wood from the trees. Dorre (talk) 22:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I have my eye on a lot of what you mention above but am conscious that my knowledge of the detail is slim and that the umpteen sources are highly technical. I'm off for a couple of days into a bit of Wales that has no easy internet access, during which time I will be having a bit of a think about where to go from here. It would be great if I turned up here at the weekend and found that someone had done that bold thing. There does not seem to be much disagreement that big changes are needed. - Sitush (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

MUARC 4-year study

I have great difficulty with edits that make exaggerated claims about the benefits of helmet laws. Although, as a member of the editorial board of the BHRF, some people might consider I have a conflict of interest, the data on head and non-head injuries shown on the BHRF website Head and non-head injuries over time is not consistent with the quote added by Tim:

"A 1995 study by Carr et al. found that cyclist admissions to hospitals in Victoria in the first four years after helmet legislation was introduced were 40% below the number expected on the basis of pre-legislation trends, and that the severity of cyclist head injury had also declined subsequent to the helmet legislation.[18]"
Some balance is necessary. Tim didn't like my direct quote from the report stating the fall in head injuries, but indicating that some of the reduction might be due to reduced cycling. Does anyone therefore have a problem with a counterbalancing direct quote from the BHRF web page noting that "Both head and non-head injuries fell substantially"? Dorre (talk) 10:17, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because it is irrelevant. - Sitush (talk) 14:09, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah! I think that I may begin to understand your point and the problem we have been having lately. I'm sorry to be so slow, but of course the Hall of Valence Mary is junior to Peterhouse and I can only accept my consequent inferiority. You are of course quite right in the strictest sense; what happens to control groups, or to non-head injuries, is not directly relevant to bicycle helmets in Australia. However, if we take this article to include scientific studies into the results of head injury legislation in Australia, then it is absolutely essential to produce a text that fully takes into account the use of scientific controls, such as non-head injuries. Dorre references a graph which gives an excellent idea of what happened to the numbers of injuries to cyclists over a period including the law. If you take a quick look at it and spend a moment thinking through its implications, it will be clear to you that head injuries did reduce after the law. And so, more or less identically, did other injuries. The obvious scientific implication is that the overall exposure of cyclists to danger reduced, consistent with other studies which do show a reduction in cycling after helmet laws. But no obvious effect of mass helmet use on head injuries is supported.

Now, this leaves us with some choices for this article. We could perfectly well leave all the scientific stuff, apart from a very very brief summary and maybe a couple of graphs, to the Bicycle helmet article. Or we could ensure that our comments reflect a fuller view of the science; this doesn't mean putting in every possibly-Reliable comment but implies that we should give a cautious and balanced view of the Australian science; this will inevitably duplicate some material from Bicycle helmet. I'd follow your guidance to either of those two choices. But it is absolutely unacceptable to cherry-pick figures and quotations that give a one-sided view, then omit graphical presentations of data from reliable sources that give an unbiased, clearer and more comprehensive idea to the reader. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:28, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

It is nothing to do with educational establishments/perceived inferiority and everything to do with focus. This article is about bicycle helmets in Australia. If someone wants to write an article about head injuries to motorists, cyclists, pedestrians (... skateboarders, horseriders) in Australia then they're welcome to do so and there might be a justification for including such an article as a See also link from here.

If someone wants to include a graph here then it must involve precisely zero original research, be in focus and ideally not have been created by anyone who has a stake in the academic dispute. Indeed, we may be entering the realms of WP:MEDRS and might not even be in a position where we can invite people to draw a conclusion, as you have invited me to do above. My suspicion is that, as some people said around the time of the ANI report, this article has no real reason for existing because the content that matters can be dealt with via a merge with an article about helmet legislation worldwide. - Sitush (talk) 16:45, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree, with apologies to all and especially anyone from Australia. There is some material about the introduction of helmets, the law, support and opposition and so on that is directly apposite to this article and could possibly form a respectable article on its own, but we seem to be moving to the idea of removing all of the scientific debate from this article. What do others think of this proposal? Richard Keatinge (talk) 17:26, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

When there are no cyclists, there are no cycling injuries, but it has nothing to do with helmets. The issue of whether how much of the effect was due to reduced cycling and how much to increased helmet wearing cannot possibly be irrelevant to an article on bicycle helmets. Perhaps Sitush can elaborate on why this is considered irrelevant. I think most casual readers are capable of understanding this difference. In discussing the future of this Wiki page, I would certainly agreed that no information is better than an article that attributes reductions in head injury from reduced cycling to helmets. But is no information better than one with intricate detail? That is a very hard decision. We were discussing how to simplify the information to make it accessible to the casual reader. Striking a balance means following Einstein's maxim - everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Dorre (talk) 21:58, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that Einstein did not digress. When there are no cyclists, there is no relevance to this article. I cannot make it simpler than that. Any meta-level stuff needs to be said elsewhere and why people cannot see the elephant in the room is beyond me, although the obvious reason is being blinded by vested interests. - Sitush (talk) 22:45, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I do see your point. You may be less mystified if I tell you that the full and proper use of control groups - agreed by all sides to be scientifically necessary to the debate - is a central element in the longstanding scientific disputes about, in fact, the effects of bicycle helmets in Australia. Your response makes a further argument for removing almost all of the scientific debate to Bicycle helmet, leaving here little more than a remark that it exists. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

If, after looking at the WA graph, somebody (eg. Richard Keatinge) thinks that the reduction in cyclist head injuries after the helmet law was 'more or less identical' to (head) injury reductions in other road users, and that 'no obvious effect of mass helmet use on head injuries is supported', then the graph has been misunderstood/misinterpreted.

The accompanying text states that "A 1996 analysis by Bruce Robinson used information on head injuries, recorded for hospital admissions in Western Australia (WA) since 1971, to show the remarkably similar trends for all road users, and noted that a divergence between the injury rates from 1991 was unexplained, suggesting that it might just be random variation."

However, the graph has been reproduced from (figure 1 in) a 1999 analysis by Hendrie et al..

Curiously, prior to my addition of the results of the Hendrie analysis, there was no reference in the text to the Hendrie analysis. The text I added re the Hendrie analysis was "The WA data were later analysed by Hendrie et al., using a statistical model to estimate the effect of the helmet law on cyclist head injuries, after taking the downward trends in both pedestrian and cyclist head injuries into account. The model showed that the divergence was not due to random variation (p<0.001); that before the helmet law the proportion of cyclists with a head injury was on average 6% higher than the proportion of pedestrians with a head injury; and that after the law the proportion of cyclists with a head injury was on average 16% lower than the proportion of pedestrians with a head injury. (This divergence can be seen on the graph, where the green/pedestrian line crosses the black/cyclist line the year before the helmet law is introduced.)".

On Bruce Robinson's graph (fig. 8 in http://www.bhsi.org/veloaust.htm), the 'divergence' is much clearer. (When I reproduced Bruce Robinson's graph, and added the cyclist and pedestrian data points from the extra 3 years from the Hendrie graph, and the 'divergence' became even more obvious and consistent, and clearly does not appear to be 'random variation'.)

The purpose of the Hendrie figure 1 graph was to show the injury trends in various road user groups, NOT to illustrate the clear (p<0.001) effect of mass helmet use on head injuries. Figure 2 in the Hendrie paper (http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/intranet/libpages.nsf/WebFiles/ITS+-+bikes+report+Hendrie/$FILE/helmets+report+Hendrie.pdf) CLEARLY shows the reduction in cyclist vs pedestrian head injuries in WA.

The Hendrie (figure 1) graph is being misused/misinterpreted (ie. it is misleading, in the context in which it is being used), and should be removed. Linda.m.ward (talk) 11:39, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Mmm.To quote from Robinson (your Hendrie URL doesn't seem to be accessible): "The divergence between WA pedestrian and cyclist rates in 1991 (before the legislation) is so far unexplained..." (http://www.bhsi.org/veloaust.htm). The above gives further reason to remove the main dispute from this page. I would note that there are published graphical representations of indisputably-reliable figures that all should agree are relevant and which would probably be useful here as residual introductions to the issue. Richard Keatinge (talk) 14:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should list all areas and consider where general agreement exists. Basically the topic runs for 30+ years, 1980 - 2013, many reports can be accessed. What to include, built up to legislation, did Governments act properly, has legislation provided a benefit to Australia, effects on individuals, reporting the evidence etc. Reporting areas of scientific debate would help readers to appreciate why debate occurs. If the article ends up being long and slightly complicated in a few parts but accurate, reliable and balanced this may provide the best approach for understanding the topic. "removing all of the scientific debate" may not be a good objective, "this article has no real reason for existing because the content that matters can be dealt with via a merge with an article about helmet legislation worldwide" many country seems to vary their approach to helmets or legislation and trying to include all the details into one report may mean missing out important information. Colin at cycling (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Why? You will just be repeating what has already been said. None of us can comment on whether governments "acted properly" or whether legislation" provided a benefit to Australia" and we already know that as soon as we try evaluating it then all the conflicts of interest turn the article into one of the most messy, trivial and incomprehensible pieces of writing that many experienced uninvolved people have had the misfortune to see. I really do think some contributors here would benefit from having a wider experience of the many subjects that Wikipedia presents: you, Colin, for example, appear to be a single-purpose account and that is rarely ever A Good Thing. Spread your wings a bit, seen how we do stuff generally and learn from it. - Sitush (talk) 20:01, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Road safety, cycling levels, enforcement approaches, cultural aspects all vary with countries. Even within a country variation in both type of enforcement or just promotion occurs. Readers may end up not knowing which country or part of that country is being discussed. Many wiki contributions could also occur and trying to have one article and explain each aspect to both readers and people contributing may be vary time consuming.

I think we have different points of view. I have some concerns that a useful balance is being missed. The risk level of cycling v helmet effects. The 1991 article by Ron Shepard provided details of the relative risk, Ron had given evidence to government in 1986. Robinson's 1996 paper provided data on risk per million hours. The issue of wearing protection is about risk v effects. Ron Shepard's article was removed and this would not help readers. The article probably fails to adequately balance risk against effects, to help readers have a good understanding. Colin at cycling (talk) 16:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

The article is not about risks vs effects and if it were then the data as presented would still be useless as an aid to understanding. Seriously, I'm giving this no more than another 24 hours and then I am going to pull all the allegedly scientific content unless someone can square the obvious circle. - Sitush (talk) 16:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Support the idea of bold pruning.Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)