Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

speaker

351 appearances 17 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2010 last heard Jan 2021

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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More or Less · Predicting L'Aquila Earthquake: is it right to blame the scientists? · 29 Oct 2012 podcast

Practising defensive science and the only statements we made were sort of bland things that never actually drew one conclusion or another. matched

But of course, if people are worried, that's what will happen. matched

More or Less · Hit movies and killer birthdays (WS) · 29 Jun 2012 podcast

Well, it's very interesting. matched

The main graph is amazing because it shows, you know, in terms of the difference between your death day and your birthday, it's absolutely flat apart from this blip on your birthday, an absolute spike, 14%, something on your birthday that kills you. matched

And they don't find any dip before, so there's no holding on, and they don't find any dip after, so there's no jumping the gun. matched

It's purely a birthday effect. matched

They actually look for, suggest there's an excess in particular groups of people, particular causes of death. matched

I actually think that's a red herring. matched

I think to identify these specific causes, when you do another check on it, the data are compatible with a uniform 14% blip on all causes, all ages, both sexes. matched

This is a very big study. matched

There's 2.5 million deaths they've looked at. matched

But if we actually look at what the excess is, it's an excess of 900 deaths in which people have been registered to have the same birth date as their death day. matched

Now, there's not that many out of 2.5 million, and I suppose maybe I'm getting sceptical in my old age, but this is only to do with matching registrations. matched

Now, the Swiss are very precise bookkeepers, but it's possible that someone could have a matching birth date and death date in their death record when that was not actually the case. matched

A mistake like that only has to happen in 0.04% of registrations in order to completely explain this blip. matched

I'm not saying that's what happened, matched

But I think, you know, for me to be convinced about this, frankly, rather implausible finding of this totally uniform effect across everything and this single little blip, I think in order to be convinced about that, I'd want to see them sadly go back to every single match and double check. matched

More or Less · Red meat death risk? · 16 Mar 2012 podcast

Their findings mean that if there were two men, say, aged 40, and they were really the same, they had the same weight and the same job and the same exercise, but the only difference is that one ate an extra portion of meat every day.

So let's say two friends and one of them every lunchtime had a hamburger and the other didn't.

Now, what they found is that the one who likes the meat has a 13% extra risk of dying each year.

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