Thursday 15 June 2017

Violence in psychiatric hospitals - junk science edition

A study has been published in The Lancet looking at whether violent assaults rose or fell after a psychiatric hospital banned smoking. Here are the results (click to enlarge)...


As you can see, it made no difference at all. See you tomorrow.









No, hang on. The authors of the study have got something to tell you...

In our study in a large UK mental health organisation, there was a significant reduction in the number of physical assaults after the introduction of the comprehensive smoke-free policy, when controlling for time, seasonality, and confounders of violence.

You what?!

After adjustment for all significant confounders, the results suggest there was a 39% reduction in the number of violent assaults per month overall in the period after the introduction of the policy compared with the period before the policy was introduced.

Jeez. Stop wasting our time with this garbage.

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