The usual comment on this whenever someone makes this argument is they've never done a randomized controlled trial on parachuteshttps://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1337807163356536839 …
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The point is you can't absolutely prove the parachutes saved people's lives and not some other factor unless you take a randomly chosen group of people, take them all up in the air at the same time in the same plane, and make half of them jump with a chute and half without
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There are obvious ethical and informed consent issues with doing research of this kind This is the basic problem with RCTs for any genuinely serious medical problem It's especially true for the horrific idea of a gender clinic doing an RCT on puberty blockers
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I mean being non-flippant they did actually control for it with a whole pile of ethically questionable tests in the early 1940's when trying to work out military jump training. Mostly shoving animals off high towers and trying to see if they'd survive.
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Interestingly the testing feeds back into the metaphor though, because it established that there are heights at which your parachute won't make enough of a difference, so it's better to deploy early.
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