M. Kary on the epidemiological approach to traffic-safety research

M. Kary has released the manuscript of his paper on the unsuitability of the epidemiological approach in studying traffic safety.

Unsuitability of the Epidemiological Approach to Bicycle Transportation Injuries and Traffic Engineering Problems
Author: M Kary
Injury Prevention 2015;21:73-76, Published Online First 14 August 2014

First paragraph of the abstract:

Bicyclists and transportation professionals would do better to decline advice drawn from characteristically epidemiological studies. The faults of epidemiology are both accidental (unpreparedness for the task) and essential (unsuitability of the methods). Characteristically epidemiological methods are known to be error-prone, and when applied to bicycle transportation suffer from diversion bias, inappropriately broad-brush categorisations, a focus on undifferentiated risk rather than on danger, a bias towards unsafe behaviour, and an overly narrow perspective. To the extent that there is a role for characteristically epidemiological methods, it should be the same as anywhere
else: as a preliminary or adjunct to the scientific method, for which there is no
substitute.

You may read the entire manuscript here:

Kary2014UnsuitabilityOfEpid.pdf

About jsallen

John S. Allen is the author or co-author of numerous publications about bicycling including Bicycling Street Smarts, which has been adopted as the bicycle driver's manual in several US states. He has been active with the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition since 1978 and served as a member of the board of Directors of the League of American Bicyclists from 2003 through 2009.
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7 Responses to M. Kary on the epidemiological approach to traffic-safety research

  1. Thanks, that was interesting. Too bad I can’t download “A Denial of Our Boasted Civilization” without a Google+ or Facebook account, that sounded like an interesting reference to read.

  2. Hokan says:

    Interesting. And damning.

    Jean-Francois, I created a fake account at academia.edu and was able to download “A Denial of Our Boasted Civilization”. It too is interesting; a class-aware history of cyclists’ right to the roads.

  3. Bruce Epperson says:

    J-F,
    Go to any decent sized public or (if open to the public) college library. Cox’s article is easily available on JSTOR. Most of the better articles can only really be found on a library-type database, and if it is any consolation, the search engines are far better.

    As to the substance of the Cox article, I would recommend William Plowden’s The Motor Car and Politics in Britain (Pelican Paperbacks 1971). Unless all you care about is the bicycle angle, it has much more of the big picture, and it’s always been my contention that there is no such thing as bicycle history or politics, only road history and politics.

  4. Bruce Epperson says:

    I assert that the Kary article is either a hoax or a fraud. I assert that there is no such person as “Dr. M. Kary” residing in Montreal, Quebec. The listed address is a hotel on the rue d. Jauques. Noone with such a name holds a Canadian medical license, nor is a member of the American Epidemiological Society or that of Canada. No dissertation or other scholarly article other than the present article or a similar letter to Injury Prevention appearing shortly before this article is listed in WorldCat.

    Moreover, the writing style is not indicative of someone who is well versed, or particularly good at, scholarly writing. While the critique of individual papers was often warranted, broader concepts such as displacement and temporal shift was badly muddled, indicating an inability to clearly separate problems of methodology and those of imputed values, a persistent problem in epidemieology. (Example: people fall while rock climbing. Therefore, rock climbing is dangerous. Thus, we need to put big pillows under all the recreational climbing sites. No, because it defeats the whole purpose of rock climbing.)

    The paper appears to have been written by someone well versed in basic statistics, and the application of statistics to bicycle use, but not epidemiology.

    I challenge M. Kary to embarass me in public with his or her full name, institutional affiliation, and a brief career C.V.

    • jsallen says:

      I have met M. Kary, and ridden bicycles with him. That he does not hold a medical license is hardly surprising, because his doctorate is in mathematics. As to your other comments I’ll let him know of your challenge so he can reply himself.

  5. Bruce Epperson says:

    I have heard from Dr. Kary, and have, in turn, written Dr. Kary extending my apologies to him. We may disagree, but to accuse him of bad faith was a mistake, thoughtless and exactly the type of thing I have criticized others of.

    I apologize to Dr. M Kary.

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