Livre d'Or

Wow, that's really egregious! A meta-analysis based heavily on studies by the review authors is one thing, but one based heavily on studies on the same data set, that's shocking. And if I had known that they were claiming helmets are over 80% effective I would have been way more skeptical, based on the Goldacre review I inferred just that helmets have some protective effect, which seemed uncontroversial.

I think there's a bit of problem with arguing from compulsion doesn't work to helmets don't work; an obvious explanation would be that the legislation is not effective at changing behaviour and not properly enforced. It's like comparing countries with different abortion laws; where abortion is in fact illegal the rate of abortion isn't substantially lower than in countries where the procedure is legal and available, but I don't think anyone would argue that abortion doesn't successfully terminate pregnancies.

But ok, it seems like the evidence in favour of helmets protecting cyclists is worse than I thought it was, easy enough to accept that conclusion given that it leads to the same decision I was planning to make anyway :-)