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Cory Doctorow

As Tim Requarth writes in Slate, Peltzman's ideas failed to stop seatbelts, but the did lead to widespread motorcycle helmet law repeals - and a wave of fatalities and maimings.

slate.com/technology/2021/11/r

Risk compensation does occur in very narrow and specific circumstances, but all the studies purporting to show that it is a widespread, predictable outcome of any safety regulation have failed to replicate.

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10 Nov 2021 at 14:54 | Open on mamot.fr
5 comments
Cory Doctorow

But just as health-and-safety panic served a useful purpose, so does risk compensation fraud: it serves as an unassailable justification for both big-business-freindly deregulation and authoritarian sex-negativity.

Risk compensation helps corporations that want to avoid retooling to comply with safety measures, such as fight child safety caps on medicine:

degruyter.com/document/doi/10.

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10 Nov 2021 at 14:54 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

More prominently, it's empirical facewash for blue-nose moralizing. Risk compensation was used to fight the Pill ("it'll make women promiscuous"):

washingtonpost.com/archive/lif

HPV vaccines ("they'll make kids promiscuous"):

content.time.com/time/nation/a

Syphilis treatment ("they'll make everyone promiscuous"):

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/462651

PrEP ("it'll make gay/bisexual men promiscuous"):

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu

The morning-after pill ("it will encourage unprotected sex"):

theguardian.com/world/2006/nov

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More prominently, it's empirical facewash for blue-nose moralizing. Risk compensation was used to fight the Pill ("it'll make women promiscuous"):

washingtonpost.com/archive/lif

HPV vaccines ("they'll make kids promiscuous"):

10 Nov 2021 at 14:55 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Risk compensation is also the excuse of choice to fight drug-related harm reduction, especially needle exchanges ("if we give addicts clean needles, they'll shoot up more"):

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/

Risk compensation and health-and-safety panic are both part of a safety nihilism campaign that serves big business's deregulatory agenda, and the cruel moralizing of right wing religious maniacs, the traditional turkeys-voting-for-Christmas coalition.

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10 Nov 2021 at 14:55 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But risk compensation is especially salient in these covid days, where it's being used to fight rapid testing ("encourages risky behavior").

The problem isn't the difficulty of formulating good health and safety policy, though that difficulty is real. The problem is that, having ruled health policy to be above question or scrutiny, we invite paternalism and authoritarianism.

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10 Nov 2021 at 14:55 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Whether it's a noble lie, a grift, a moral panic, or a deregulatory fraud, abuse of safety rhetoric always comes to light. When it does, it discredits the whole project of evidence-based safety.

And *that* is truly an unsafe situation.

eof/

10 Nov 2021 at 14:56 | Open on mamot.fr
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