A Link Between Marijuana Legalization & Car Crashes? Nonsense

In October, the Highway Loss Data Institute and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a self-published report that suggested there’s a strong correlational link between automobile crash rates and the legalization of marijuana in states. This would be harrowing news if the finding was based upon strong scientific evidence. Unfortunately for these institutes, though, the research data is murky at best. And because these organizations self-published the report, rather than going through the scientific peer-review process, it’s hard to take their findings seriously. Before we begin to look at the data, readers should understand that although the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) are two distinct legal organizations, they share the same senior leadership, the same physical address, and probably a lot more. It makes it sound like these are two independent, unrelated organizations that found similar results when they pooled their collective minds together, but that is not the case. I also have to begin this article with the usual scientific reminder — correlation does not equal causation. When I conduct a study on the effect of people opening their umbrellas in an urban downtown area and its impact for that behavior to create rain, I will find a very strong positive correlation between the two. But we know that opening an umbrella does not cause the rain to fall. Yet science will readily show a s...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain and Behavior General Minding the Media Research Crash Data crashes and marijuana driving with marijuana Highway Loss Data Institute Insurance Institute for Highway Safety marijuana use Source Type: blogs