Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA11056 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 18 Apr 2001 15:22:53 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745DB4@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 15:19:30 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Barry Glassner's book 'The Culture of Fear' goes through a litany of these
kinds of things.
Isn't this a point made about the stock market as well- that if you look at
a long enough period of time all you find is random distributions of rises
and falls, and no clear indication that people actually doing anything has
anything to do with stockmarket peaks and troughs.
Ah well, economists are simply snake-charmers in better suits...
> ----------
> From: Wade T.Smith
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 2:02 pm
> To: memetics list
> Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
>
> On 04/18/01 08:49, Vincent Campbell said this-
>
> >There's another reason for this apparent pattern you've not considered-
> that
> >these events were entirely unrelated causally, but only related by the
> media
> >running with a number of conincidental cases, presenting it as part of a
> >trend, and over-stating their own involvement in the events.
>
> Finding statistical patterns is a chancy and often errant business, and
> assuming you have a random sample is also hard. MIT just did a study of
> sickness distribution in Massachusetts that refuted the anecdotal and
> reported clusters of disease in the areas of historical industrial waste,
> finding instead that with only one exception, the distributions were all
> within chance occurance.
>
> Remember there is always an agenda....
>
> - Wade
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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