Yep, I am reluctantly inclined to agree (and I offered much the same
reservations about the Golden Gate Bridge study in my description of it...).
Not sure I'd go so far as to say it's superstitious behavior, but I would agree
that the certainty expressed by some suicidology advocates in the literature
seems to go well beyond the strength of the data (at least so far as we can
tell).
Re: Rick Froman's question, I'm inclined to believe that it's a testable
empirical question, and I do think it would be an interesting and challenging
exercise to design the ideal study to do so. I may try this one out on some of
our Emory undergraduates.
....Scott
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D.
Professor
Editor, Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice
Department of Psychology, Room 473 Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences
(PAIS)
Emory University
36 Eagle Row
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
[email protected]
(404) 727-1125
Psychology Today Blog:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-psychologist
50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140513111X.html
Scientific American Mind: Facts and Fictions in Mental Health Column:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammind/
The Master in the Art of Living makes little distinction between his work and
his play,
his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his
recreation,
his love and his intellectual passions. He hardly knows which is which.
He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does,
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him - he is always doing both.
- Zen Buddhist text
(slightly modified)
From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2010 11:32 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Bloor street bridge suicide study
Lilienfeld, Scott O wrote:
What about Chris Green's point that the barriers may indeed decrease
suicides at the bridges themselves and perhaps even nearby bridges, but that
people who were going to jump probably end up killing themselves through other
means.... If the view that 'they'll just go elsewhere to die by suicide' has
any merit whatsoever, one would expect at least half of those restrained to do
so. But the actual figure is nowhere close to that. Approximately 95 percent
of those who were restrained either were still alive at the time of the study
or had died of natural causes" (p. 151).
But, again, this is a dataset specially selected to confirm the hypothesis.
These people were near to jumping (but, note, we don't know if they would have
actually become jumpers. There are people who contemplated jumping at the site,
but then don't go through with it. We have no idea how many of these people
"restrained by police" would have actually jumped).
Once barriers are erected, and the fact is widely publicized, then people who
might have jumped before aren't ever going to be included in the number of
(attempted) jumping suicides. There is simply no way to know how many of the
non-jumping suicides after barriers are erected would have become jumping
suicides if the means had been still easily available (much less, how many
people who never actually attempted suicide by any means would have committed
suicide by jumping if the barriers were not in place). (Looking at overall
suicide rates before and after might be a start, but the numbers of jumpers are
so small to begin, and confounding variable from year to year so difficult to
control, with that it is nearly impossible to show a significant change.)
What we have (IMHO) here are a bunch of people (some of them otherwise skilled
professional researchers) who have become convinced a priori that barriers
"work," and then go looking for confirmation of the "fact." As we here all
know, confirmation bias is a terrible way to ascertain truth.
Instead, what we seem to have is a Great Public Show of Concern -- we build
something enormous and expensive that visibly represents our concern, we make a
show of sacrificing a (usually) well-beloved, highly visible feature of the
city -- even though doing so doesn't effectively redress the phenomenon of our
concern. It is, in a phrase, superstitious behavior, not far removed (I'm
afraid) from sacrificing animals or doing rain dances.
The Master in the Art of Living makes little distinction between his work and
his play,
his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his
recreation,
his love and his intellectual passions. He hardly knows which is which.
He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does,
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him - he is always doing both.
- Zen Buddhist text
(slightly modified)
Indeed!
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-2100 ex. 66164
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
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