The Hypocrisy in Frank Krygowski's professions of faith

On 8/28/2010 3:47 PM, André Jute wrote:
[...]
Yet another lie from Frank Krygowski. Among my engineering and
technical books[...]

Written by Mini-André I through IV, no doubt.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On 8/28/2010 4:15 PM, André Jute wrote:
[BORING]

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:38:07 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Mike, your posts - like Jute's - are long on mockery, indignation and
sarcasm.

One is probably a sock-puppet of the other. They are both equally
tiresome.

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
Dan O wrote:

On Aug 27, 7:40 pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
Dan O wrote:



On Aug 27, 10:59 am, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article

m,
Dan O wrote:

On Aug 26, 11:56 pm, "MikeWhy"
wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Frank Krygowski wrote:
Then there was the Bell "Courage for your Head" ad in
Buycycling magazine. It consisted almost entirely of
that phrase, plus a full- page photo of three or four
mountain bikers standing at the bottom of a 25'cliff,
looking up at the camera. The camera-eye view was
intended to represent the reader, who - by
implication - would ride his mountain bike down a 25'
vertical cliff because his helmet would give him
courage.

You truly are an idiot. These are bicyclists, not face
jumpers. Bicyclists ride down from hills, not jump
down onto their heads. You are a ****ing idiot.

And you obviously missed the point.

Hardly. I get his point, and it's bull****.

No, you didn't. You're making that more clear with every
post. Indeed, it's clear you have understood little that
has been said to you in these threads; you appear to have
read them looking for the things to rebut than reading
them for comprehensive understanding.

This is beyond tiresome.

Isn't that the truth!

snip

Helmets can do some good sometimes. We pretty much all agree
on that, right?

Yes. As I've said, for example, I think that bike helmets
probably provide reasonable protection for young children as
they are fairly likely to crash within the parameters of the
helmet's design. They are short (heads less than 6 feet above
the ground) and they tend to be going slowly. And they are
more likely to fall over than an adult.

So there is some threshold of height, weight, speed, likelihood
of falling over, etc., at which point the protective quality of a
bicycle helmet suddenly becomes zero? I don't think anyone here
is saying that bicycle helmets provide absolute protection for
anyone.

MikeWhy (and Jute, but he is negligible) propose 97% prevention of
death by head injury in New York City, at least. That's pretty
close to absolute. If you live in New York. The same benefits are
not available, apparently, if you live anywhere else in the world.


You were responding to my summary view on the matter of bicycle
helmet worth. Nowhere did I cite or agree with any of what you're
now citing.

(wearisome)

Wearisome why? You're misinterpreting my answer as an attribution to
you. You said "I don't think anyone here is saying that bicycle
helmets provide absolute protection for anyone" and I pointed out two
people in this thread who do appear to be making that assertion. I
said nothing about your position on helmets.

I'll let you explain the science of counting. I'll stick with the real
sciences. The NY study reports 3% of fatalities wore helmets, over the 8
years of the study. I made no other representation of the data. The trouble
only comes when you try to read farther than what the data allow. They say
nothing of cause of death; nothing of the role the helmet played; nothing of
circumstances, beyond the already stated circumstance of dying while
bicycling. Emphatically, I never tried to claim "97% prevention of death by
head injury." That's a game I save for bean counters, you see.

MikeWhy wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
Dan O wrote:

On Aug 27, 7:40 pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
Dan O wrote:



On Aug 27, 10:59 am, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article

m,
Dan O wrote:

On Aug 26, 11:56 pm, "MikeWhy"
wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Frank Krygowski wrote:
Then there was the Bell "Courage for your Head" ad in
Buycycling magazine. It consisted almost entirely of
that phrase, plus a full- page photo of three or four
mountain bikers standing at the bottom of a 25'cliff,
looking up at the camera. The camera-eye view was
intended to represent the reader, who - by
implication - would ride his mountain bike down a 25'
vertical cliff because his helmet would give him
courage.

You truly are an idiot. These are bicyclists, not face
jumpers. Bicyclists ride down from hills, not jump
down onto their heads. You are a ****ing idiot.

And you obviously missed the point.

Hardly. I get his point, and it's bull****.

No, you didn't. You're making that more clear with every
post. Indeed, it's clear you have understood little that
has been said to you in these threads; you appear to have
read them looking for the things to rebut than reading
them for comprehensive understanding.

This is beyond tiresome.

Isn't that the truth!

snip

Helmets can do some good sometimes. We pretty much all agree
on that, right?

Yes. As I've said, for example, I think that bike helmets
probably provide reasonable protection for young children as
they are fairly likely to crash within the parameters of the
helmet's design. They are short (heads less than 6 feet above
the ground) and they tend to be going slowly. And they are
more likely to fall over than an adult.

So there is some threshold of height, weight, speed, likelihood
of falling over, etc., at which point the protective quality of a
bicycle helmet suddenly becomes zero? I don't think anyone here
is saying that bicycle helmets provide absolute protection for
anyone.

MikeWhy (and Jute, but he is negligible) propose 97% prevention of
death by head injury in New York City, at least. That's pretty
close to absolute. If you live in New York. The same benefits are
not available, apparently, if you live anywhere else in the world.


You were responding to my summary view on the matter of bicycle
helmet worth. Nowhere did I cite or agree with any of what you're
now citing.

(wearisome)

Wearisome why? You're misinterpreting my answer as an attribution to
you. You said "I don't think anyone here is saying that bicycle
helmets provide absolute protection for anyone" and I pointed out two
people in this thread who do appear to be making that assertion. I
said nothing about your position on helmets.

I'll let you explain the science of counting. I'll stick with the real
sciences. The NY study reports 3% of fatalities wore helmets, over
the 8 years of the study. I made no other representation of the data.
The trouble only comes when you try to read farther than what the
data allow. They say nothing of cause of death; nothing of the role
the helmet played; nothing of circumstances, beyond the already
stated circumstance of dying while bicycling. Emphatically, I never
tried to claim "97% prevention of death by head injury." That's a
game I save for bean counters, you see.

PS. If it needs saying, a retraction is in order. I don't expect an apology.

On Aug 28, 11:14*pm, "Bill Sornson" wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote in message

...

On Aug 28, 7:35 am, "MikeWhy" wrote:

Tim proposes that, for bicycle
helmets to be deemed effective, they must ensure the wearer's survival
against a head first strike from falling out an eighth story window,

I wonder if a cycling helmet would have saved an accountant I once
tried to throw out of an eighth floor window onto Madison Avenue in
NY. -- AJ

No, but perhaps Prozac would have?

Bill "your choice taken by whom" S.

Nah, there's a law against forcefeeding accountants Prozac. Bloody
hell, Bill, what goes on in your office? -- AJ

On Aug 29, 12:28*am, Andrew Price wrote:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:38:07 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski

wrote:
Mike, your posts - like Jute's - are long on mockery, indignation and
sarcasm.

One is probably a sock-puppet of the other. *They are both equally
tiresome.

Especially when we're winning the argument so handsomely that
Krygowski has to resort to the whining above to gather a little
sympathy from the faithful commie-pinko-fellow-travellers.

Andre Jute
Global Warming is like Scientology, only with less science

On Aug 29, 12:36*am, "MikeWhy" wrote:
MikeWhy wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
Dan O wrote:

On Aug 27, 7:40 pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article
,
*Dan O wrote:

On Aug 27, 10:59 am, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article

m,
*Dan O wrote:

On Aug 26, 11:56 pm, "MikeWhy"
wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

Frank Krygowski wrote:
Then there was the Bell "Courage for your Head" ad in
Buycycling magazine. *It consisted almost entirely of
that phrase, plus a full- page photo of three or four
mountain bikers standing at the bottom of a 25'cliff,
looking up at the camera. *The camera-eye view was
intended to represent the reader, who - by
implication - would ride his mountain bike down a 25'
vertical cliff because his helmet would give him
courage.

You truly are an idiot. These are bicyclists, not face
jumpers. Bicyclists ride down from hills, not jump
down onto their heads. You are a ****ing idiot.

And you obviously missed the point.

Hardly. I get his point, and it's bull****.

No, you didn't. *You're making that more clear with every
post. Indeed, it's clear you have understood little that
has been said to you in these threads; you appear to have
read them looking for the things to rebut than reading
them for comprehensive understanding.

This is beyond tiresome.

Isn't that the truth!

snip

Helmets can do some good sometimes. *We pretty much all agree
on that, right?

Yes. *As I've said, for example, I think that bike helmets
probably provide reasonable protection for young children as
they are fairly likely to crash within the parameters of the
helmet's design. *They are short (heads less than 6 feet above
the ground) and they tend to be going slowly. *And they are
more likely to fall over than an adult.

So there is some threshold of height, weight, speed, likelihood
of falling over, etc., at which point the protective quality of a
bicycle helmet suddenly becomes zero? *I don't think anyone here
is saying that bicycle helmets provide absolute protection for
anyone.

MikeWhy (and Jute, but he is negligible) propose 97% prevention of
death by head injury in New York City, at least. *That's pretty
close to absolute. *If you live in New York. *The same benefits are
not available, apparently, if you live anywhere else in the world.

You were responding to my summary view on the matter of bicycle
helmet worth. *Nowhere did I cite or agree with any of what you're
now citing.

(wearisome)

Wearisome why? *You're misinterpreting my answer as an attribution to
you. *You said "I don't think anyone here is saying that bicycle
helmets provide absolute protection for anyone" and I pointed out two
people in this thread who do appear to be making that assertion. *I
said nothing about your position on helmets.

I'll let you explain the science of counting. I'll stick with the real
sciences. The NY study reports 3% of fatalities wore helmets, over
the 8 years of the study. I made no other representation of the data.
The trouble only comes when you try to read farther than what the
data allow. They say nothing of cause of death; nothing of the role
the helmet played; nothing of circumstances, beyond the already
stated circumstance of dying while bicycling. Emphatically, I never
tried to claim "97% prevention of death by head injury." That's a
game I save for bean counters, you see.

PS. If it needs saying, a retraction is in order. I don't expect an apology.

Don't hold your breath for this scumball McNamara (or Krygowski) to do
the right thing. -- AJ

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
"MikeWhy" wrote:

"Tim McNamara" wrote in message
...
In article , "MikeWhy"
wrote:

That didn't take long at all, did it? Scratch the gloss off the
exterior a bit longer and you squeal and sound just like Frank.

Again you are making erroneous attributions, Mike. At this point I
can only guess that it is a lame attempt at baiting your
correspondents. You might as well stop wasting your time. I've had
this discussion many times previously and so far nothing is new,
other than the claim you and Jute have been making of helmets
providing 97% prevention of fatal brain injuries.

"Tim McNamara" wrote in message
...
I don't recall Frank mentioning risk compensation (which BTW is
one of the apologia

I remember it plainly, not simply once but waved continually as
though it were a banner. It's especially memorable for being a jaw
dropper, for the lack of real world experience it reveals. I know
a thing or two about risk compensation. Wearing armored and padded
3mm leathers and Snell stickered helmet on a racetrack with broad,
flat run-off areas likely involves some sense of invulnerability
and risk compensation. An engineered styrofoam beanie atop an
otherwise bare body covered in lycra has very little chance of
evoking risk compensation.

The pro-helmet people have been claiming that it does for years,
invoking this as the reason why helmets fail to reduce the
incidence and prevalence of cycling-related brain injuries.

I can't answer for your strawmen. We were a lot closer when you wrote
that you rode with awareness of your surroundings and appropritae
caution of hazards.


They don't do destructive testing of helmets for BHSI
certification. If they did, it would be far more helpful
because it would seek the upper limits of helmet protection.

Yes, Tim, they *do* test helmets to destruction. That's the helmet
test protocol we've been discussing.

Read the test protocol again, Mike. They drop the helmet, if it
survives intact it passes.

The test standard stipulates deceleration load and duration limits.
"If it survives intact it passes" is a fabrication, a willful lie.

There is no instrumentation, no measurement
of energy absorption.

The headform is instrumented to measure deceleration as a function of
time, as required to demonstrate compliance.

I stand corrected on that, Mike. Rereading the page

http://www.bhsi.org/testing.htm

it's been updated since I last looked at it and it does specify that
there is an accelerometer in the headform. Thanks for pointing this
out. It's somewhat encouraging, although measuring g is still an
unhelpful thing without consideration of mass. At 200 g a BB hits
with much less energy than a cantaloupe, just as at 200 g the force
of impact of a headform that weighs less than 15 lbs is much less
than a head attached to a body (e.g., my 220 lbs).

That's actually backwards. G is more relevant for evaluating injury
potential from my reading of brain injury literature, something I thought
you might know more about than I. It makes sense to me, as otherwise you
would have to do precisely as you say, and qualify the impact energy by
stating the mass. Presumably, a 200 G event is approximately the same for a
3.5 kg brain as it is for a 4 kg brain, but the energies involved are quite
different. The same would apply for tearing of viscera, popping of eyeballs,
and on and on. If the accelerations are known, specified as the single value
G, you could make direct sense of it without further computation to account
for mass.


Also, the headform and helmet are traveling 11 mph at impact in two of
the three tests, slower than the ~14 mph of my recollection for all
the tests. I had forgotten that the drop is lower for the
hemispheric and curb-shaped anvils. (Perhaps the CPSC thinks that
people duck before they hit an edged surface or an object like a
rock).

I don't know. I printed the document and set it aside for later study.

On Aug 28, 2:47*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Aug 27, 5:41 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:


Dan, you seem to be lowering the standard of acceptability to the
point where anything might pass it.

No. *No. *No. *Somebody says it's impossible to predict the worth of a
helmet in a crash event. *IOW, it might not help at all. *I just say,
"then again it might" - the point being that if it *could* have some
positive value then please don't treat me like a dufus just because
that value is not absolute or even guaranteed to be great (though you
know what - I think it *could* be great in some potential events).
This is not the same as saying anything is possible so everything is
better than nothing, or that I believe the value is absolute - or even
great - but maybe worth wearing the thing.

The point is, any safety device should be evaluated based on its
_likely_ effects, not its best possible effects. That was my reason
for bringing up the Zippo lighter. The fact that one might possibly
(indeed, did) stop a bullet isn't sufficient for promoting Zippos as
body armor.

It's the same for medical interventions - drugs, surgery techniques,
etc. What they do is look at large samples to determine what the
effect will be in the general population. And in the few cases where
their samples' results are contradicted in the general population,
they're often quick to backtrack. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
for post-menopausal women is one example of retracting a
recommendation that did more harm than good. (Thalidomide was a much
more horrible one, hopefully never repeated.)

Bike helmets are at that juncture. As with HRT, early small scale
studies predicted great benefit. As with HRT, large population data
shows either zero benefit or actual harm. And as with HRT, most of
the discrepancy appears to be self selection of subjects in the small
studies.

(Guy Chapman jokingly pointed out
that his wooly balaclava apparently saved his life once, because he
was wearing it when he fell and hit his head. *And it really is true
that a Zippo lighter stopped a bullet at least once.)

This, if I understand the term, is textbook strawman.

Nope, not the intent. See above.

The question shouldn't be whether something _might possibly_ prevent a
brain injury. *Weird random events do occasionally happen. *The
question should be whether a certified-for-14-mph, sub-1-pound
styrofoam hat is really likely to prevent a brain injury. *Since
cycling brain injuries haven't gone down since helmet use has soared,
the answer seems to be "no."

The good news is, those brain injuries have were always extremely
rare, and continue to be extremely rare. *So at least the lack of
helmet effectiveness doesn't matter much to the people wearing them.

These are all arguments against MHL. *Fine. *Take them there.

These are also arguments against the other promotion of helmets, not
just MHLs. Why promote something that isn't particularly needed, and
doesn't particularly work against the "dangers" that are claimed?


At least read these numbers:http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1041.html

I've perused that site. *My objectivity meter went
"beeeeeeeeeeep!" *(there may be some tinfoils hats around there
somewhere, too)

Okay, I clicked the link. *The data says that (of those injuries
studied) the incidence was pretty constant. *That's all it says. *The
"notes" below cite no supporting data whatsoever.

Besides, I want to see the whole business laid out in complete detail
(who, what, where, when, how, etc.), before I can begin to form much
of an opinion around it. *I want to see and understand it and make up
my own mind (surely you can appreciate this :-). *I just don't want to
dedicate my life to doing that - especially when I don't think any
such studies can cover all the factors well enough, and even if they
did, *still* wouldn't reflect my own situation much.

Well, you've got to decide what you're willing to do. If you aren't
willing to study very much about this issue, you're not likely to ever
get the complete who, what, when, where and how, as you put it. And
of course, most people don't ever bother.

But you might consider that, at least based on discussions in these
r.b.* groups, the people that _have_ decided to do the study have
changed from pro-helmet to helmet skeptic. At least, I don't know of
anyone who's taken the opposite path.

- Frank Krygowski