Once upon a time, there was a dread disease that afflicted children. And in fact, among all the diseases that existed in this land, it was the worst. It killed the most children. And along came a brilliant inventor, a scientist, who came up with a partial cure for that disease. And it wasn't perfect. Many children still died, but it was certainly better than what they had before. And one of the good things about this cure was that it was free, virtually free, and was very easy to use. But the worst thing about it was that you couldn't use it on the youngest children, on infants, and on one-year-olds.
昔、子供達を苦しめる とても恐ろしい病気がありました 実際 地球上の病気の中で最も重篤なもので 多くの子供が亡くなりました そこに賢明な科学者が現れ 不完全ながらも治療法を発明しました それは完璧なものではなく、尚多くの命が失われましたが 以前より状況が改善しました その治療法の利点の一つはそれがタダということでした 文字通り無料である上に 使い方は簡単でした しかし 最大の難点は 2歳以下の赤ん坊には使えないことでした
And so, as a consequence, a few years later, another scientist -- perhaps maybe this scientist not quite as brilliant as the one who had preceded him, but building on the invention of the first one -- came up with a second cure. And the beauty of the second cure for this disease was that it could be used on infants and one-year-olds. And the problem with this cure was it was very expensive, and it was very complicated to use. And although parents tried as hard as they could to use it properly, almost all of them ended up using it wrong in the end. But what they did, of course, since it was so complicated and expensive, they only used it on the zero-year-olds and the one-year-olds. And they kept on using the existing cure that they had on the two-year-olds and up.
そして数年後に 別の科学者が現れました 先人ほど賢明でなかったようです しかし 第1の治療法を改良して 第2の治療法を見つけました 第2の治療法の素晴らしい点は 2歳未満の赤ん坊にも治療できたことです しかしこの治療の問題は 高価な点でした そして 使用法も複雑でした 親は適切な使用を心がけましたが うまく使える人はほとんどいませんでした 第2の治療法は複雑で高価だったので 2歳未満の子供たちにのみ用いられました 2歳以上の子供には 以前の治療法を使い続けました
And this went on for quite some time. People were happy. They had their two cures. Until a particular mother, whose child had just turned two, died of this disease. And she thought to herself, "My child just turned two, and until the child turned two, I had always used this complicated, expensive cure, you know, this treatment. And then the child turned two, and I started using the cheap and easy treatment, and I wonder" -- and she wondered, like all parents who lose children wonder -- "if there isn't something that I could have done, like keep on using that complicated, expensive cure." And she told all the other people, and she said, "How could it possibly be that something that's cheap and simple works as well as something that's complicated and expensive?" And the people thought, "You know, you're right. It probably is the wrong thing to do to switch and use the cheap and simple solution." And the government, they heard her story and the other people, and they said, "Yeah, you're right, we should make a law. We should outlaw this cheap and simple treatment and not let anybody use this on their children." And the people were happy. They were satisfied.
人々はしばらくこの方法に満足していました ある母親が2歳になったばかりの子を失うまで 2つの治療方法を併用していました 母親は考えました あの子は2歳になったところだった 2歳になるまでは 複雑で高価な治療法を使い続けてきた そして2歳になり 安価で簡単な治療法に変えたばかりだった そして 子を失った他の親と同様に悩みます 他の方法はなかったのだろうか 複雑で高価な治療法を使い続けた方がよかったのか 母親は皆にその思いを語りました 「本当にこんなことがあり得るのでしょうか? 安価で単純な方法が あの複雑で高価な治療法と同じ効果があるなんて」 周りの人も同じ考えを持っていました 安価で単純な方法に切り替えたことが 間違いだったのかもしれない 政府も母親たちの話を聞いて言いました 新しい法律をつくるべきだ この安価で単純な治療法を違法にすべきだ 子供たちにこの治療法を用いてはならない 人々はそれに満足しました
For many years this went along, and everything was fine. But then along came a lowly economist, who had children himself, and he used the expensive and complicated treatment. But he knew about the cheap and simple one. And he thought about it, and the expensive one didn't seem that great to him. So he thought, "I don't know anything about science, but I do know something about data, so maybe I should go and look at the data and see whether this expensive and complicated treatment actually works any better than the cheap and simple one." And lo and behold, when he went through the data, he found that it didn't look like the expensive, complicated solution was any better than the cheap one, at least for the children who were two and older -- the cheap one still didn't work on the kids who were younger.
それから何年間かはうまくいっていました ある時ひとりの無名の経済学者が現れました 彼にも子供がおり高価で複雑な治療法を利用していました しかし安価で単純な治療法も知っていました 彼にとっては高価な治療法が それほど優れているとは思えませんでした 私は科学は無知だが データについては知識はある データを調べてみよう この高価で複雑な治療法が 安価で単純な治療法より効果があるか確かめよう データを調べると 驚いたことに 少なくとも2歳以上の子供については 高価で複雑な治療法が 安価な治療法よりも 効果が優れているわけではありませんでした 2歳未満の子供には 安価な治療法はやはり無効でした
And so, he went forth to the people and he said, "I've made this wonderful finding: it looks as if we could just use the cheap and simple solution, and by doing so we could save ourselves 300 million dollars a year, and we could spend that on our children in other ways." And the parents were very unhappy, and they said, "This is a terrible thing, because how can the cheap and easy thing be as good as the hard thing?" And the government was very upset. And in particular, the people who made this expensive solution were very upset because they thought, "How can we hope to compete with something that's essentially free? We would lose all of our market." And people were very angry, and they called him horrible names. And he decided that maybe he should leave the country for a few days, and seek out some more intelligent, open-minded people in a place called Oxford, and come and try and tell the story at that place.
経済学者は人々に言いました すばらしい発見をしました 安価で簡単な方法だけで問題ないようだ その結果 年間3億ドルの経費を削減できる そのお金を子供のための別のことに使おう 親たちは非常に不満に思いました 安価で簡単な方法が厄介な方法と同じ効果があるとは思えない 政府も非常に立腹しました 特にこの高価な方法を見出した人は この考えを腹立たしく思いました ほぼ無料ともいえる方法に取って代わられると 市場から閉め出されてしまう 人々も怒り 経済学者を非難しました 経済学者は 数日 国を離れるべきだと考えました そして より賢明で心の広い人が住む オックスフォードと呼ばれる場所へ行き その地で自分の考えを伝えようとしたのです
And so, anyway, here I am. It's not a fairy tale. It's a true story about the United States today, and the disease I'm referring to is actually motor vehicle accidents for children. And the free cure is adult seatbelts, and the expensive cure -- the 300-million-dollar-a-year cure -- is child car seats. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is some of the evidence why I believe this to be true: that for children two years old and up, there really is no real benefit -- proven benefit -- of car seats, in spite of the incredible energy that has been devoted toward expanding the laws and making it socially unacceptable to put your children into seatbelts. And then talk about why -- what is it that makes that true? And then, finally talk a little bit about a third way, about another technology, which is probably better than anything we have, but which -- there hasn't been any enthusiasm for adoption precisely because people are so enamored with the current car seat solution. OK.
私がここにいるのはそのためです おとぎ話ではありません これがアメリカの現状です 今まで話してきた病気とは つまり 子供の交通事故です 無料の治療法とは大人用のシートベルトで 年間3億ドルに相当する高価な治療法とはチャイルドシートです これが事実であると私が信じるに至った証拠について 今日はお話ししたいと思います 2歳以上の子供はチャイルドシートを使っても 安全は約束されません 多大なエネルギーを使って この法律を普及させてきました 子供にシートベルトを使うことを 禁じました それが正しいとされてきた理由について 説明します 最後に 第3の方法について触れたいと思います それはどれよりも優れたものです しかし 採り入れようとする人はいません なぜなら 人々は チャイルドシートが最善と思っているからです
So, many times when you try to do research on data, it records complicated stories -- it's hard to find in the data. It doesn't turn out to be the case when you look at seatbelts versus car seats. So the United States keeps a data set of every fatal accident that's happened since 1975. So in every car crash in which at least one person dies, they have information on all of the people. So if you look at that data -- it's right up on the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's website -- you can just look at the raw data, and begin to get a sense of the limited amount of evidence that's in favor of car seats for children aged two and up. So, here is the data. Here I have, among two- to six-year-olds -- anyone above six, basically no one uses car seats, so you can't compare -- 29.3 percent of the children who are unrestrained in a crash in which at least one person dies, themselves die. If you put a child in a car seat, 18.2 percent of the children die. If they're wearing a lap-and-shoulder belt, in this raw data, 19.4 percent die. And interestingly, wearing a lap-only seatbelt, 16.7 percent die. And actually, the theory tells you that the lap-only seatbelt's got to be worse than the lap-and-shoulder belt. And that just reminds you that when you deal with raw data, there are hundreds of confounding variables that may be getting in the way.
さて データ調査では 複雑な事象の記録が基になりますが、 シートベルトとチャイルド シートの比較はそうではありません 1975年以降に発生したすべての死亡事故について 米国ではそのデータを記録しています つまり死亡者があった自動車事故について 同乗者の情報を得ることができるのです 運輸省道路交通安全局のサイトを ご覧ください 未加工のデータをご覧になるだけでも 2歳以上の子供のチャイルドシート利用を支持する証拠が わずかしかないことが 理解いただけるでしょう 6歳以上はチャイルドシートは使わないので 2歳から6歳までの子供が同乗して死亡事故が発生した場合です そのうち器具で固定されていなかった場合 29.3パーセントの子供が死亡しています チャイルドシートに座った子供の死亡率は18.2パーセント もし3点式ベルトをしていれば死亡率は19.4パーセントです 2点式ベルト着用では16.7パーセントでした 理論的には 2点式シートベルトは 3点式よりよくないはずです 未加工のデータを処理する際には 非常に多くの変数が存在します それが結果をわかりにくくしています
So what we do in the study is -- and this is just presenting the same information, but turned into a figure to make it easier. So the yellow bar represents car seats, the orange bar lap-and-shoulder, and the red bar lap-only seatbelts. And this is all relative to unrestrained -- the bigger the bar, the better. Okay. So, this is the data I just showed, OK? So the highest bar is what you're striving to beat. So you can control for the basic things, like how hard the crash was, what seat the child was sitting in, etc., the age of the child. And that's that middle set of bars. And so, you can see that the lap-only seatbelts start to look worse once you do that. And then finally, the last set of bars, which are really controlling for everything you could possibly imagine about the crash, 50, 75, 100 different characteristics of the crash.
そこで私たちの研究においては より簡単に理解できる図を作成しています 黄色のバーがチャイルド シート オレンジは3点式 赤色が2点式のシートベルトを示しています どれも着用していない場合との比較です バーが長いほど 優秀ということになります それでは このデータにご注目ください 最も長いバーこそ 誰もが求めているものです 衝突時の衝撃の大きさや 子供が座っていた座席 年齢も調整できます 真ん中のグラフにあたります このような調整をおこなうと 2点式が あまり良いとは思えなくなります そして最後に この最後のグラフです このバーは 衝突事故において想定できるすべての要素を 調整したものです 衝突事故には様々な特徴があります
And what you find is that the car seats and the lap-and-shoulder belts, when it comes to saving lives, fatalities look exactly identical. And the standard error bands are relatively small around these estimates as well. And it's not just overall. It's very robust to anything you want to look at. One thing that's interesting: if you look at frontal-impact crashes -- when the car crashes, the front hits into something -- indeed, what you see is that the car seats look a little bit better. And I think this isn't just chance. In order to have the car seat approved, you need to pass certain federal standards, all of which involve slamming your car into a direct frontal crash. But when you look at other types of crashes, like rear-impact crashes, indeed, the car seats don't perform as well. And I think that's because they've been optimized to pass, as we always expect people to do, to optimize relative to bright-line rules about how affected the car will be.
命を守るという観点ではチャイルドシートと三点式ベルトは 死亡率は全く同時であることがわかります ばらつき幅はこの推定でも 比較的小さいものです ざっくりとした数値ではありません 非常にはっきりと傾向がわかります 興味深いことに 正面衝突のケースでは チャイルド シートの方が有効です これは偶然ではありません チャイルドシートが承認されるためには 連邦規格に合格する必要があるからです すなわち 正面衝突も考慮する必要があるのです しかし 後部からの衝突では チャイルドシートはそれほど有効ではありません テストに合格することに重点を置いているのです 我々が常に期待するように 明確な判断基準を満たす事を優先しているからです 車がどれほど影響を受けるかということです
And the other thing you might argue is, "Well, car seats have got a lot better over time. And so if we look at recent crashes -- the whole data set is almost 30 years' worth of data -- you won't see it in the recent crashes. The new car seats are far, far better." But indeed, in recent crashes the lap-and-shoulder seatbelts, actually, are doing even better than the car seats. They say, "Well, that's impossible, that can't be." And the line of argument, if you ask parents, is, "But car seats are so expensive and complicated, and they have this big tangle of latches, how could they possibly not work better than seatbelts because they are so expensive and complicated?" It's kind of an interesting logic, I think, that people use. And the other logic, they say, "Well, the government wouldn't have told us [to] use them if they weren't much better."
もう1点についてはこう議論されるでしょう チャイルドシートの性能が向上しているはずだ 最近の衝突事故に限って数値を見ようとしても 最近の事故に限定されてはいません データは過去30年にわたるものだからです しかし 最近の事故でも 三点式ベルトは チャイルドシートより有効です そんなはずはない と思う人もいるでしょう 子供たちの親はこう言います チャイルドシートは高価で複雑だ 掛け金が絡み合っているし シートベルトよりも効果がないはずがない 高価で複雑なのだから 非常に興味深い論理です 別の論理もあります チャイルドシートがその程度のものなら それを使えと政府が言うはずがない
But what's interesting is the government telling us to use them is not actually based on very much. It really is based on some impassioned pleas of parents whose children died after they turned two, which has led to the passage of all these laws -- not very much on data. So you can only get so far, I think, in telling your story by using these abstract statistics. And so I had some friends over to dinner, and I was asking -- we had a cookout -- I was asking them what advice they might have for me about proving my point. They said, "Why don't you run some crash tests?" And I said, "That's a great idea." So we actually tried to commission some crash tests. And it turns out that as we called around to the independent crash test companies around the country, none of them wanted to do our crash test because they said, some explicitly, some not so explicitly, "All of our business comes from car seat manufacturers. We can't risk alienating them by testing seatbelts relative to car seats."
しかし政府が利用を促しているのは データを元にしているのではありません 2歳になったばかりの子供を失った親たちの 強い願いに基づいているのです その願いが一連の法律を通過させました ここまでのところ 抽象的な統計の数字で お話ししてきました 友人を数人 夕食に招いた時 私はアドバイスを求めました 衝突実験をするといい と言われました いい考えだと思いました 実際に衝突実験を行いました 衝突テストを行う独立系の会社を 探し歩きました 衝突テストを引き受けてくれる会社はありませんでした なぜなら チャイルド シートの製造元から仕事をもらっているからです シートベルトとの比較実験で関係を悪くしたくないのです
Now, eventually, one did. Under the conditions of anonymity, they said they would be happy to do this test for us -- so anonymity, and 1,500 dollars per seat that we crashed. And so, we went to Buffalo, New York, and here is the precursor to it. These are the crash test dummies, waiting for their chance to take the center stage. And then, here's how the crash test works. Here, they don't actually crash the entire car, you know -- it's not worth ruining a whole car to do it. So they just have these bench seats, and they strap the car seat and the seatbelt onto it. So I just wanted you to look at this. And I think this gives you a good idea of why parents think car seats are so great. Look at the kid in the car seat. Does he not look content, ready to go, like he could survive anything? And then, if you look at the kid in back, it looks like he's already choking before the crash even happens. It's hard to believe, when you look at this, that that kid in back is going to do very well when you get in a crash. So this is going to be a crash where they're going to slam this thing forward into a wall at 30 miles an hour, and see what happens. OK?
なんとか 匿名を条件に 実験をしてくれる会社を見つけました 衝突させる度に1席あたり1500ドル ニューヨーク州 バッファローを訪れました 彼等が先発隊です 衝突テスト用のダミーです センター ステージにあがろうと 出番を待っています 衝突テストの模様です 車1台をまるごと衝突させるわけではありません その必要はないのです ベンチシートだけあります そこにシートベルトを締めチャイルド シートをのせます こちらをご覧ください 親は チャイルド シートが有効と考える理由がわかります チャイルド シートに座っている子を見て下さい 何があっても生き残るように見えますね? 一方で後部座席の子供は 衝突が起こる前だというのに 窒息しそうではありませんか 衝突が起きたとき 後部座席の子供が 無事で済むとは信じがたいです さて衝突実験を行います 時速50キロで壁に向かって衝突させると 何が起こるか見てみましょう
So, let me show you what happens. These are three-year-old dummies, by the way. So here -- this is the car seat. Now watch two things: watch how the head goes forward, and basically hits the knees -- and this is in the car seat -- and watch how the car seat flies around, in the rebound, up in the air. The car seat's moving all over the place. Bear in mind there are two things about this. This is a car seat that was installed by someone who has installed 1,000 car seats, who knew exactly how to do it. And also it turned out these bench seats are the very best way to install car seats. Having a flat back makes it much easier to install them. And so this is a test that's very much rigged in favor of the car seat, OK? So, that kid in this crash fared very well.
さて何が起こるのでしょうか ちなみに このダミーは3歳児です こちらはチャイルド シートです 2つの点に注目してください 頭が前方に飛び出し 膝にぶつかりそうになります これがチャイルド シートです チャイルドシートがあちこち跳ねています チャイルドシートは あらゆる方向に動きます 2つのことに注意しておいてください このチャイルドシートを取り付けたのは 経験豊富で正しく設置できる人です また このベンチシートは チャイルドシートの取り付けにには最適なのです 背部が平面なので取り付けが簡単です このテストはチャイルドシートに有利な条件で行われました この衝突事故にあった子供は よく頑張りました
The federal standards are that you have to score below a 1,000 to be an approved car seat on this crash, in some metric of units which are not important. And this crash would have been about a 450. So this car seat was actually an above-average car seat from Consumer Reports, and did quite well. So the next one. Now, this is the kid, same crash, who is in the seatbelt. He hardly moves at all, actually, relative to the other child. The funny thing is, the cam work is terrible because they've only set it up to do the car seats, and so, they actually don't even have a way to move the camera so you can see the kid that's on the rebound. Anyway, it turns out that those two crashes, that actually the three-year-old did slightly worse. So, he gets about a 500 out of -- you know, on this range -- relative to a 400 and something. But still, if you just took that data from that crash to the federal government, and said, "I have invented a new car seat. I would like you to approve it for selling," then they would say, "This is a fantastic new car seat, it works great. It only got a 500, it could have gotten as high up as a 1,000." And this seatbelt would have passed with flying colors into being approved as a car seat.
連邦規格では チャイルドシートとして認定を受けるには 1000以下のスコアでなければなりません この際 単位は重要ではありません この衝突実験では スコアは450でした 消費者レポートでは このチャイルド シートは 平均以上の数値でした 次は シートベルトを着けている人形を使います 他の人形ほど動きません おもしろいことに カメラワークが悪かったのです チャイルドシートと同じ設定だったので 子供が弾んでいる様子を撮影することさえできませんでした この3歳の子供に関して行った2度の衝突では スコアは約500でした 先ほどと比較すると良くない結果でした この衝突でのデータを連邦政府に持っていくとします 新しいチャイルド シートを発明したので 販売する為の承認を得たいと言います すばらしいチャイルドシートだ と言うでしょう スコアは500でした 1000までは問題ないのです このシートベルトは チャイルドシートとして 何の問題もなく承認を受けたはずです
So, in some sense, what this is suggesting is that it's not just that people are setting up their car seats wrong, which is putting children at risk. It's just that, fundamentally, the car seats aren't doing much. So here's the crash. So these are timed at the same time, so you can see that it takes much longer with the car seat -- at rebound, it takes a lot longer -- but there's just a lot less movement for child who's in the seatbelt. So, I'll show you the six-year-old crashes as well. The six-year-old is in a car seat, and it turns out that looks terrible, but that's great. That's like a 400, OK? So that kid would do fine in the crash. Nothing about that would have been problematic to the child at all. And then here's the six-year-old in the seatbelt, and in fact, they get exactly within, you know, within one or two points of the same. So really, for the six-year-old, the car seat did absolutely nothing whatsoever.
この実験が示していることは 単にチャイルドシートのセット方法に誤りがあって 子供たちを危険にさらしてしまっているのではなく チャイルドシートでは十分ではないのです タイミングをあわせてあります チャイルドシートの方がリバウンドを続けています ずっと長くです シートベルト着用の子供の方が動きが小さいです 6歳児の衝突についてもご覧ください チャイルド シートに座った6歳児です 数値は400程度でしょうか つまり衝突でも無事だということです この衝突では子供に問題が生じることは全くないでしょう 次はシートベルト着用の6歳児です 数値は数ポイント違いますが ほとんど同じ結果です つまり 6歳児に関しては チャイルド シート固有の効果はありません
That's some more evidence, so in some sense -- I was criticized by a scientist, who said, "You could never publish a study with an n of 4," meaning those four crashes. So I wrote him back and I said, "What about an n of 45,004?" Because I had the other 45,000 other real-world crashes. And I just think that it's interesting that the idea of using real-world crashes, which is very much something that economists think would be the right thing to do, is something that scientists don't actually, usually think -- they would rather use a laboratory, a very imperfect science of looking at the dummies, than actually 30 years of data of what we've seen with children and with car seats.
この他にも いくつか証拠はあります しかしある科学者から批判をいただきました 4回の実験だけで研究成果を公表すべきではない と 彼に45004回のテストであれば どうでしょうか? と返信しました 実際に発生した45000回の衝突事故も考慮しているのです 実際に発生した衝突事故のデータを使うという発想も 良いのではないかと思います 経済学者は 真っ当な方法だと考えます しかし 科学者は 実験室を使うことを考えるでしょう それは代替品を使った 非常に不完全な科学です 我々が検証した子供とチャイルド シートに関する 30年間にわたるデータと異なります
And so I think the answer to this puzzle is that there's a much better solution out there, that's gotten nobody excited because everyone is so delighted with the way car seats are presumably working. And if you think from a design perspective, about going back to square one, and say, "I just want to protect kids in the back seat." I don't there's anyone in this room who'd say, "Well, the right way to start would be, let's make a great seat belt for adults. And then, let's make this really big contraption that you have to rig up to it in this daisy chain." I mean, why not start -- who's sitting in the back seat anyway except for kids? But essentially, do something like this, which I don't know exactly how much it would cost to do, but there's no reason I could see why this should be much more expensive than a regular car seat. It's just actually -- you see, this is folding up -- it's behind the seat. You've got a regular seat for adults, and then you fold it down, and the kid sits on top, and it's integrated. It seems to me that this can't be a very expensive solution, and it's got to work better than what we already have.
この問題に対して 遙かによい解決方法があるでしょう チャイルドシートが上手くいっているように思えるので その解決方法を誰も受け入れないのです デザインの観点から考えるのであれば 最初に立ち戻って考え こう言うでしょう 「後部座席の子供を守りたいんだ」 ここに おられる方で こんな風におっしゃる方はいないでしょう 「まず最初に 大人用の高性能シートベルトをつくるのが先決だ その後で なんとかして その複雑な装置を取り付けるようにしようじゃないか」 でも、後部座席に乗るのは主に子供たちですよね つまりは この通りです 費用は分かりません でも 普通の座席より 高価である理由は 見つからないでしょう この座席は折りたたみ式で 座席の背もたれです 大人用の普通の座席があるところに これを展開すると 子供たちの座る座席になります それほど費用はかかりません 今ある仕組みより 上手くゆくはずです
So the question is, is there any hope for adoption of something like this, which would presumably save a lot of lives? And I think the answer, perhaps, lies in a story. The answer both to why has a car seat been so successful, and why this may someday be adopted or not, lies in a story that my dad told me, relating to when he was a doctor in the U.S. Air Force in England. And this is a long time ago: you were allowed to do things then you can't do today. So, my father would have patients come in who he thought were not really sick. And he had a big jar full of placebo pills that he would give them, and he'd say, "Come back in a week, if you still feel lousy." OK, and most of them would not come back, but some of them would come back. And when they came back, he, still convinced they were not sick, had another jar of pills. In this jar were huge horse pills. They were almost impossible to swallow. And these, to me, are the analogy for the car seats. People would look at these and say, "Man, this thing is so big and so hard to swallow. If this doesn't make me feel better, you know, what possibly could?"
問題は この装置が採用されるかどうかです 採用されれば 多くの命を救うことになります この答えとして ひとつお話しをしましょう チャイルドシートが成功している理由です そしてこの装置が将来 採用されるかどうかは 私の父が語った話にヒントがあります 父は昔 在英の米空軍で医者をしていました 今では許されないことも 当時は可能でした 病気とは言えないような症状の患者が 来ることがあります そういう患者には 大きな瓶に入っている偽薬を取り出します 1週間しても良くならないなら もう一度来るように と言います ほとんどの患者は2度と来ませんでした しかし 中にはやって来る患者もあります 彼等が病気では無いと確信している父は とても大きな錠剤が入った瓶を取り出します 飲み込める大きさではありません これがチャイルドシートの理論です 患者はとても大きな薬だ と言います この薬でも回復しないなら いったいどうしろと言うんだ?
And it turned out that most people wouldn't come back, because it worked. But every once in a while, there was still a patient convinced that he was sick, and he'd come back. And my dad had a third jar of pills. And the jar of pills he had, he said, were the tiniest little pills he could find, so small you could barely see them. And he would say, listen, I know I gave you that huge pill, that complicated, hard-to-swallow pill before, but now I've got one that's so potent, that is really tiny and small and almost invisible. It's almost like this thing here, which you can't even see."
ほとんどの患者はもう戻ってくることはありませんでした 薬が効いたからです 時には 自分が病気だと思っている患者がいるものです そういった患者には 第3の瓶を取り出します 父によれば 最小の錠剤で その粒を見分けることができないくらいです この前の錠剤は巨大で 複雑で飲み込むのが難しかったはずだ 今度の薬は良く効いて 目に見えないくらい小さな錠剤だ 見えないだろう
And it turned out that never, in all the times my dad gave out this pill, the really tiny pill, did anyone ever come back still complaining of sickness. So, my dad always took that as evidence that this little, teeny, powerful pill had the ultimate placebo effect. And in some sense, if that's the right story, I think integrated car seats you will see, very quickly, becoming something that everyone has. The other possible conclusion is, well, maybe after coming to my father three times, getting sent home with placebos, he still felt sick, he went and found another doctor. And that's completely possible. And if that's the case, then I think we're stuck with conventional car seats for a long time to come. Thank you very much.
そして 父が この小さな錠剤を与えた患者が 病状を訴えて再び来ることは ありませんでした これは この小さな錠剤に 究極の偽薬効果があることの証拠だと 父は考えていました それが正しい物語であれば この一体型の座席は 短期間で 普及すると思います 父のもとを3度訪れて 偽薬を持ち帰った患者が 回復していないこともあり得ます 別の医者にかかった可能性もあります そのようなケースがあり得るのであれば 今後も長期にわたって 既存のチャイルドシートを使い続けることになるでしょう ありがとうございました
(Applause)
(拍手)
(Audience: I just wanted to ask you, when we wear seatbelts we don't necessarily wear them just to prevent loss of life, it's also to prevent lots of serious injury. Your data looks at fatalities. It doesn't look at serious injury. Is there any data to show that child seats are actually less effective, or just as effective as seatbelts for serious injury? Because that would prove your case.)
観客: シートベルトの着用は 命を守る為だけではありません 重傷にならずにすみます データは死亡率のみで重傷者数は含まれていません チャイルド シートがシートベルトと同程度以下の効果しかないと 示すデータはありますか? 正当性を証明できると思います
Steven Levitt: Yeah, that's a great question. In my data, and in another data set I've looked at for New Jersey crashes, I find very small differences in injury. So in this data, it's statistically insignificant differences in injury between car seats and lap-and-shoulder belts. In the New Jersey data, which is different, because it's not just fatal crashes, but all crashes in New Jersey that are reported, it turns out that there is a 10 percent difference in injuries, but generally they're the minor injuries. Now, what's interesting, I should say this as a disclaimer, there is medical literature that is very difficult to resolve with this other data, which suggests that car seats are dramatically better.
レヴィット: 私のデータでは ニュージャージー州の衝突事故を調べました 傷害についても 差異がほとんどありませんでした つまり チャイルド シートと3点式シートベルト着用での差異は 統計的に重要ではありませんでした ニュージャージー州のデータは 死亡事故だけではありません 報告のあった衝突事故も含んでいます 傷害については10%の差異がありましたが そのほとんどは軽傷でした 念のために申し上げなければなりませんが 他のデータと相反する医療文献があり チャイルドシートがはるかに優秀と解説しています
And they use a completely different methodology that involves -- after the crash occurs, they get from the insurance companies the names of the people who were in the crash, and they call them on the phone, and they asked them what happened. And I really can't resolve, yet, and I'd like to work with these medical researchers to try to understand how there can be these differences, which are completely at odds with one another. But it's obviously a critical question. The question is even if -- are there enough serious injuries to make these cost-effective? It's kind of tricky. Even if they're right, it's not so clear that they're so cost-effective.
彼等は 全く違った方法をとっています 衝突事故が起こった後に 保険会社から 事故に関わった人の名前を聞き出しました その人たちに電話をして 何が起きたのかを尋ねています まだ判断はつきかねることがあります こういった医学研究者の方々と共同で 差異が生じる原因を理解したいです これは整合性がありません この問題はよく考えなければなりません コストが見合うといえるほど多くの重傷が 発生しているのでしょうか 彼等が正しかったとしても 十分に費用効果が高いかどうかは 分からないのです