Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Joined: Aug 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 1,045 Location: Brazil
Re: Dead Scientists Mystery « Reply #16 on Jun 20, 2006, 8:45pm »
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The first question that popped into my mind was, ‘what was his blood alcohol level?’
And how late was it? Maybe he fell asleep.
10:30 PM.
One interesting aspect of the story is that he had driven east on a small road from the restaurant. Though he lived east of the restaurant the shortest route would have been to drive north to the Ventura Freeway and the fastest route would have been to drive a few miles west then go north on a bigger road to the freeway, one of his friends thought he would take the latter route. This suggests a few possibilities some sinister some not.
1) He was tired / drunk and turned the wrong way.
2) a} He took the route he did to meet a friend or lover, drive along the beach, pick up something at a store that says open late etc. His friend misunderstood or just assumed he would take the fastest route or he changed his plans after talking to his friend
b} for some reason he hid his plans from his friend perhaps he was: cheating on his girlfriend or boyfriend or was having an affair with someone who was married or committed to someone else, buying drugs, meeting a “deep throat” type source etc.
3) Someone forced him to drive the wrong way.
Foul play probably wasn’t involved but even if it was it could have been unrelated to his work as the CT site implies. One of the articles linked from the site quoted a cop as saying “nothing was disturbed” and the only sign of his car going off the cliff was"a slight rubber scuff mark on one of the guardrails" which to me much better fits the drunk/sleepy driver scenario than him being forced off the road. His car was a 97 Civic I imagine as the LA based West Coast editor of Aviation Week he put a lot of mileage on it simple mechanical failure can’t be ruled out. He drove over 5 miles along a curving mountain road and the point he crashed was straight, I don’t know much about sabotaging cars but I can’t imagine what someone could do to a car that would allow it to drive normally and then after a few miles for the brakes to give out simultaneously with it veering off the road. I guess if I were a CT I would theorize he was killed or rendered unconscious in someway that wouldn’t show up on autopsy and then his car was sent off the cliff, but the cops said the brush wasn’t disturbed which probably means the car wasn’t pushed off the cliff and was going relatively fast.
"I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt"
Bertrand Russell
To paraphrase Mark Twain "The CTists' claims are both convincing and true, unfortunately what's convincing is not true, and what's true is not convincing"
Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.0." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Re: Dead Scientists Mystery « Reply #18 on Jun 27, 2006, 5:07pm »
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Without any data on whether the number of deaths are statistically significant, it's impossible to say whether this is anything to worry about, particularly as some appear to be from natural causes. How large is the pool of people who's deaths would qualify for inclusion and how many violent deaths would you expect?
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Joined: Aug 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 1,045 Location: Brazil
Re: Dead Scientists Mystery « Reply #19 on Jun 29, 2006, 4:28pm »
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Accord to the World Fact Book the Death Rate in the US is 8.25 deaths per 1000 [ http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/us/popula.html ] or one in 121 people will die in any gives year. In the UK the rate is even higher 10.18 per 1000 [ http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/uk/popula.html - 1 in 98 people]. I imagine the total number of scientists in the US and UK measures in the hundreds of thousands so we can safely assume that thousands of scientists die every year in those countries, a certain percentage of these will be violent causes. According to the WHO 7% deaths in developed countries are due to “intentional and unintentional injuries” [ http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001589.htm ], I suspect, but don’t have the patience to do the research, that scientists would have a lower rate than the general populace but the US would have a higher rate than other developed countries in any case probably over 100 scientists in American and Britain die due to accidents, murder and suicide every year.
Dornheim drove his car off a cliff just after having diner with friends. According to the story there were no signs of him braking, he was not on the road he told his friends he would take. The first question that popped into my mind was, ‘what was his blood alcohol level?’
I found data regarding death rates in the US while researching something else.
According to the CDC (1) in 2003 the last year in which they had data 79.2 men (most people on the list like most scientists are men) died of violent causes (2) per 100,000 population (pdf page 187, table 29). I don’t know how much social class affects these rates but whites, who as a whole are more affluent that other races, have virtually the same violent death rate (53.7) as the population as a whole 54.1 (see page 188). I would imagine the violent death rate for male scientists would be lower than that for the general population but the 79.2 statistic is for people of all ages, scientists are of course adults and adults have a higher death rate than the general population so these two factor would probably balance each other out.
To make a long story short we would expect the violent death rate for scientists to be about 70 - 80 per 100,000 (i.e. 0.07 %).
Inspired by that serendipitous find I did some Googling. According to the NSF (3) in 2001 there were 2,157,300 scientists and 1,256,400 engineers employed in the US for a total of 3,413,700. This doesn’t of course count retired scientists and engineers (some of the “victims” were retired) or people with science and engineering degrees employeed in other professsions. 0.07% of 3.413,700 is 2390. Thus we would expect over 2000 scientists and engineers to die violent deaths a year just in the US not counting retirees or people who died of natural causes or Americans who died in Iraq.
"I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt"
Bertrand Russell
To paraphrase Mark Twain "The CTists' claims are both convincing and true, unfortunately what's convincing is not true, and what's true is not convincing"
Re: Dead Scientists Mystery « Reply #20 on Sept 18, 2006, 12:21am »
Reading this made me smile ~ more because I can imagine the stats are very true (from my own experience) I work in an industrial lab (on my own) in the UK. I spend my day playing with dangerous (volatile organic, mutanogenic, carcinogenic, toxic younameic ) chemicals and writing software etc + lots more - Security issues mean I can't have an assistant (Although I do now he only deals with run of the mill stuff - more production orientated than anything else) My lab has no windows so I can immerse myself in product development and any associated production problems, customer problems without distraction etc Often I emerge (when I remember it might be an idea to go home or if I am feeling hungry etc) feeling totally spaced out . I have stopped at green lights (whilst driving home) and driven through red ones - I have become insomniac (thus adding to the problem) due to the stress. And I am currently suffering from a number of medical complaints which I am sure are probably more to do with my mind than my body Anyway my point is that mental stress is much worse for your survival prospects than physical stress. I know I am going to die young (probably in an RTA ) but the financial rewards offset any of the inconvenience of an early death (least that's what I keep telling myself) So I keep going. Yep, I could easily agree with those stats.
It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtah
"On two occasions, I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
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) chemicals and writing software etc + lots more - Security issues mean I can't have an assistant (Although I do now he only deals with run of the mill stuff - more production orientated than anything else) My lab has no windows so I can immerse myself in product development and any associated production problems, customer problems without distraction etc Often I emerge (when I remember it might be an idea to go home or if I am feeling hungry etc) feeling totally spaced out 
Anyway my point is that mental stress is much worse for your survival prospects than physical stress. I know I am going to die young (probably in an RTA ![[avatar]](http://lokishammer.dragon-rider.org/images/phantomwolf2a.gif)
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