Stephen/,
glenluceskies
You make strong assertions. Unfortunately,
I have worked as an "on call" for psychiatric emergencies in hospital, (that's a)) including intake triage for psychiatric emergencies (Thats b)) and been very very involved in crisis assessment team operations thats c)).
I also have experience in research (couple of theses, Master of Sciences degree, Advances statistical analysis, etc.)
I wasn't going to mention any of this but your post seemed to posit that because you have the experience you have it makes you an authority on the subject and endorses the research as reported dismissing the validity of my comments.
While everyone should feel free to believe whatever they want if it helps them through the day, including the Moon affecting human behaviour that's fine.
I only replied to the post because it seems to me very poor science and potentially influential.
However the reported research appears rather poor and the reporting of it even worse. Including the statistical analysis. They don't report the hypothesis, testing, results (only this weird 23% which was double the others...no self respecting researcher would accept reporting data like this.)
The premise if about as causally sound as "the Moon affects the tides so it must affect humans, interest rates, global warming, etc...) what is the causal factor?
Think about it:
In research, you'd try to disprove the null hypothesis which is to say there is no difference in human activity/madness between Moon phases so whatever the researched variable (and you'd want to factor analyze for Thursday pay days, weekends, etc which CAN correlate with human activity - have money will party)
i digress.
The Null Hypohesis would start off saying there is no difference between the 4 phases so what ever you are measuring will occur the same across hence 25% in each moon phase.
if the study shows something occurred 23 % in one phase
that's just basic chance.
If its double what happened elsewhere in another phase (call it 12% in another phase), then the rest of the occurrences must be packed in one of the remaining two phases... (at least 65% is split between two phases)
That implies, logically, that one of the other phases has way more than 23% off the occurrence.
I suppose Melbourne could be different. However, given that you obviously work within the environment and these events occur as "clockwork" i suggest you too can prove the predictable workloads: ask your nurse manager or quality improvement staff to show you you the incident reports (which are reported for all violent hospitals in hospitals) and correlate it yourself with moon phases.
Frank
Quote:
Originally Posted by glenluceskies
Frank, might I suggest you have not either:
(a) worked in the emergency/triage of a major hospital;
(b) worked at a Triple-0 communciations centre;
(c) or been actively involved as an emercengy service worker on the road, whether that be Police, Ambulance, CAT (Crisis Assessment Team)?
As an emergency service worker in Melbourne, I can catagorically state that when we approach a full Moon (normally 3-4 days either side of a full Moon), there is a sharp increase of workload, including domestic violence, psychiatic patients arming themselves (involuntary and voluntary, serious assaults, etc. many involving more than once service per incident.
It is fact, it occurs like clockwork, the data is there and the only common factor every month, is the full Moon. Many people dismiss this, but I myself see it first-hand in the jobs coming through, and I know that there are other IIS members who are in similar fields, who experience that same.
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