Statistics Canada released itsMortality, Summary List of Causes 2007 (1.0 MB PDF) today, with a ton of tables on causes of death, by provinces, territories and country, gender, age, etc.
As morbid as it may sound, I thought it was a rather interesting document to browse through. It’s not because I wanted to know about all the ways that people died, in summary groups, but rather how they compared to each other. We often hear about stats on various diseases, accidents, criminal activities and other causes of death. However, it’s often without context, like how does it really compare to other causes since lots of people die every day, or the context whoever is trying to persuade you of something wants you to hear. In other words, death stats are often presented to you in propaganda format. Lobbying format if you want to be kinder.
What the tables in the Mortality Summary List does is let you go through those numbers yourself, though they would generally be of more interest to Canadians since it is about Canadians. See the big and the small numbers of deaths and their causes. Which ones topped the list? Find the causes you’re interested in and see how the number who died compared to other causes. How does cancer compare to car accidents? Is AIDS that prevalent any more? See how it is in your province or territory. Are the top causes the same? Maybe even make comparisons, though you’ll have to do a per capita (per person) or percentage type of calculation to have a fair comparison in some cases. The Mortality Summary List even provided some of those calculations for you!
You’ll never had such a clear idea of what Canadians died of in your life! Were things the way you thought they were? You may want to rethink some things about various issues related to death, whether disease, crime or otherwise, especially where priorities should be put.
Makes for a great school project or presentation, too! Do it well and I promise show and tell won’t have been this interesting in a long time! 🙂
It is too bad this data is relatively old, being for the year 2007 when we are almost nearing the end of 2010. StatCan is generally pretty good at being far more up to date than that. Odd, though, that they have economic data for so many things up to the month when what’s called vital statistics such as this lags almost 3 years behind. However, unless there were some shocking new trend, and I mean shocking by numbers, not by gruesome image or high profile media stories like shark attacks, things won’t have changed much. You’re still getting a pretty good idea of what’s happening. That said, in 2007, deaths by major cardiovascular (heart) disease passed deaths by cancer for the first time in 10 years, though the trend had been predictable from previous years. Together, heart disease and cancer combined for a staggering 59% of all Canadian deaths in 2007.
Can you see the impact of obesity on society coming? Who wants to bet this order remains the same for most of the next 10, maybe even 20 years?
Anyway, it isn’t morbid to mull over stuff like this. Death is a part of life. While this is not a spiritual examination like my philosophy in the previous sentence often suggests, it is a social understanding of it for Canadian society.
And whatever tangents your mind goes on thinking about death, it certainly is a lot to think about!
Seriously, it’s not a morbid exercise. Quite enlightening, in fact. I hope you give it a look.
I’d should do some research to find an American equivalent to have a look. I bet that’d be real interesting, too!
The media is also to blame. I’m not sure whether to call the editors who allowed it on their popular news sources “stupid” for running the story like it’s legitimate news, or “smart but immoral” for putting it out knowing stuff like that sells, even if there’s no substance to it.
An above average high school student could have done a better job on such a project! Soroya basically did a bad high school project, if you ask me.
Think of that as a challenge for you high schoolers out there looking for a good Science Fair or other project to do. It’s a project that should be fun and engaging if you’re a Facebook fan, and there should be at least a few of you out there who qualify. Then social network together to pool results and get a decent sample size… which Soroya never even came close. And fix some flaws critiqued here.
Here are a few tragic fatal flaws of that “study”.
Lack of sample size with just 100 subjects
For a site with 500 million users, all Soroya can show for it is 100 users? I know it was an undergraduate thesis, but people used to have to work for their thesis, you know? Also, in the electronic media for this day and age, you’d think she could get more than 100 people to do some tests! If you were going to target 100, call it a term project and leave it at that! Don’t go screaming you’ve got a study on your hands and seek attention.
Oh, wait. I think that’s narcissism!
Which professor let that be called research anyway??? Soroya did publicly admit the sample size was a weakness to the “study”, but that’s not a weakness. That doesn’t constitute a study in this case. If I did a study of 1, I could say the same thing. Of course, nobody would call it a study due to the sample size of just 1. So at how many do you call a study, and why? With that many users and statistically significant polls of merit needing around 1000 subjects, 100 subjects is still way too few to be enough data to call a study!
Soroya also had the audacity to talk about gender differences on a sample size of 50 or so people! Did she ever take statistics? And who vetted this to allow it???
All subjects were 18-25 years old
Since when did humans outside of 18-25 years old not qualify as “people”? You can’t draw a conclusion for “Facebook users” on this demographic alone. The media did that more than Soroya, but she implied it enough not to title the study “18-25 year old Facebook users” for a subject group. And were the 100 selected even representative of all 18-25 year olds? There must be literature to determine that “average” to compare to the test group narcissism and insecurity profile. Hey, maybe 18-25 year olds at York are just more narcissistic and insecure than the typical group and uses Facebook as a symptom of it!
You can make that call. 🙂
Causality… or lack thereof
So are more active Facebook users narcissistic and/or insecure? Or are narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook more actively? Does Soroya know the difference? In case she doesn’t, let me clarify. The first is what the media story and her so-called “study” suggests. So everyone who uses Facebook more actively are narcissistic and insecure. The second means only some of the people who use Facebook more actively are narcissistic and/or insecure, and that you can’t tell if they are by the level of their Facebook activity.
But that doesn’t sell or cause a stir or make anybody care as people could have told you that on their own instinct and be right. I’m not even sure if narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook a lot because you’d also have to look at the ones who don’t use Facebook and see what portion they make up, never mind those who don’t use it much.
Soroya’s pretentious “research” can’t prove any causality, but she comments on all kinds of causality.
If I had to bet on any connection between Facebook usage and narcissism and/or insecurity, though, I’d easily bet on the second reason. I’d bet narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook more actively, not that more active users are narcisstic.
Carefully constructed self-image???
Beyond the ridiculous conclusions drawn by Soroya on causality, she then dared to speculate on meanings of symptoms of narcissism and insecurity. For example, the more active users had carefully constructed images of themselves, to project their best features and hide their worst, or that their profile is nothing really like them. Um. Does Soroya even know anything about Facebook usage?
The active users are the ones who get caught for affairs, missing work, lying to their friends, or just plainly do other less than appropriate things. They’re the ones Facebook etiquette guides were written for, cause they’re so blind to what their actions says about them to know better!
Reasons for Facebook usage unaccounted for
Does Soroya have any idea if people in this subject use Facebook for the same reasons as other demographics by any division? I mean, seniors tend to flock to Facebook and social media to be better up to date and involved in the lives of their adolescent or older grandchildren. Is that narcissism or insecurity?
Or maybe it’s love and caring. But wait, that doesn’t sell.
Some musicians I know add friends like crazy not because they care, but because they can show potential promoters and labels a nice base of fan support. Is that narcissism or insecurity?
Or maybe it’s just good old fashioned business and public relations. But wait, that doesn’t sell, either.
Final thoughts
There are many more problems with Soroya’s “high school project”. I don’t need to bore you with more as I think I’ve discredited it enough to make it worthless. I’ll just throw in a few commentaries to conclude.
Who knew it was so easy to get 15 minutes of fame these days?
I wonder what Soroya thought of Canadians possibly being among narcissistic and insecure people in the world. We have 47.9% of the population connected, a higher percentage than any nation with over 10 million people. We also have the 4th most users in the world (CTV, June 2, 2010), without anywhere near the 4th largest population in the world! Would she have said most of us use Facebook passively like we are on a lot of things? Sure we didn’t all sign up only to be passive, did we?
High school students reading this, or Parents of them, try the challenge I had for high school students at the beginning. Seriously!
And where did Soroya get accepted into medical school? I won’t fault the school in case she didn’t tell them about this work to get in. For the love of God, Allah and the Buddha, I hope Soroya never be allowed to do research until she learns some more about what research is about! Just stick to areas in Med School one only has to memorize things or use one’s hands or something that doesn’t require research type of critical thinking!
But to end positively, congratulations for raising awareness on the Facebook usage issue, Soroya. I just wouldn’t have used sensationalism in the name of research to get credibility and attention.
By the way, Soroya, how did you fare on your own test?
Good luck in Med School. Just don’t tell the media which one accepted you for your school’s sake!
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