Talk:Occupational fatality

Purely a US page so needs a global perspective. Look at other countries and address why in Europe in general and UK in particular rates of Occupational fatalaties are about half US rates. Mention coporate manslaughter in the UK. --195.224.123.130 (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Re above, nearly three years later and no change. I move that this page be retitled 'Occupational fatality in the USA', as it makes no reference to any other country. Either that or other countries should be included, with statistics and legislative solutions. Metafis (talk) 17:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I've included a globalize tag - but I would also concur that, since a decade on from the original criticism nothing has changed, this might as well be renamed 'Occupational fatality in the US'. That or somebody needs to rewrite the whole thing. 80.193.25.91 (talk) 15:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Name this section Fatal Occupational Injuries
I understand that this article is talking about fatalities caused at work because of injuries at work. However a occupational fatality could also occur because of a disease like cancer caused by workplace exposures. I think the article heading is misleading in that it actually concerns only workplace injury related fatalities and not fatalities caused by diseases. --Enfolkefiende (talk) 15:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Poor article
Just like nearly every other article, this one is very poor.

Besides the reasons commented above, it also spends half the space talking about OSHA and NIOSH whose role in fatality decline is up for debate in any case.

There are many more important organizations responsible for reducing fatalities, mostly in the transportation industry. Also, OSHA does not cover millions of workers in the US, including miners, many in agriculture, workers covered by other agencies, many State employees, and independent contractors. The original writer(s) obviously didn't know any better, which is why Wikipedia is merely a place to find some references you might no have seen before, and move on! 146.23.68.40 (talk) 20:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Risk Factors
This section has serious WP:OR issues. While it had citations for its facts and figures, they didn't indicate that these were risk factors (which implies causation); they only indicated correlation. Worse, the section seemed to be trying to WP:SYNTH out its own explanation for the gender difference (talking about how men are employed in more dangerous fields) - we can't draw the reader to that conclusion ourselves. If we're going to go over risk factors, we need sources explicitly saying X, Y, and Z are risk factors (ideally with some analysis as to why), not just statistics showing attributes correlated to workplace injury. --Aquillion (talk) 09:17, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I came here simply looking to find the percentage of work related deaths by gender. Why is this figure not in the article? Are uninterested in recognizing or educating people about issues men face more often? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.244.19.52 (talk) 18:41, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * We can't present it as a "risk factor", though, since that's not what the sources say. We'd need to have better sources - just looking up data from a table and concluding that something is a risk factor based on that is original research.  We'd need sources actually making the causal link the section implies before we could describe it that way.  --Aquillion (talk) 19:08, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Correlated factors are relevant if framed this way.
 * Aquillion do you have any other issue with the content beyond correlation not implying causation? Jazi Zilber (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm generally extremely skeptical of devoting paragraphs to pulling just a few statistics from a larger work without a secondary source that provides analysis on them; like with quotations taken directly from a primary source, it's far too easy for editors to present selected statistics to imply things that aren't implied in the original. (That is, by citing them we imply that these particular statistics are more meaningful than the ones we're passing over.)  Why are we highlighting these numbers in particular?  What do they say, beyond providing a set of arbitrary demographics over particular time period?  None of the sources are about age or gender specifically, so why were numbers for these two things pulled out of them when others were ignored, and a specific paragraph devoted to them?  Ideally, if we're going to have sections on the demographics of age and gender as they relate to occupational fatalities, we should find secondary sources that discusses them specifically and which give us a context to discuss them in, rather than trying to present random statistics based on whatever an editor considered interesting. I'm definitely opposed to just dropping a bunch of statistics into the page sourced solely to a table of raw data - it's definitely original research if we use that to explicitly state causation, but even if we're careful not to say it it's hard to avoid implying it.  All the problems would disappear if we simply had a reliable secondary source analyzing the numbers (which would both attest to the fact that these particular figures are important, and would probably provide context that would eliminate the risk of original research.) --Aquillion (talk) 09:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, both those numbers are reported in various other places. They do have a degree of notability Jazi Zilber (talk) 09:25, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * PS. Age is likely a risk factor. Elderly will stumble etc more. Gender is likely a selection factor. Men work in construction coal mining military etc risky jobs Jazi Zilber (talk) 09:41, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok, but we should find those secondary sources and add them to the article, rather than relying purely on stats pulled from a primary source. In addition to providing better sourcing, that will give us better context to describe what they mean (eg. why are these the case?  Do they change if you correct for the gender disparity in certain roles or job titles?) --Aquillion (talk) 18:46, 17 August 2017 (UTC)


 * here are some. Note however, that when I talked about secondary sources it was from my own memory seeinmg stuff multiple times. Now I am digging, but not sure etc., , Yahho answers, but has more links, Jazi Zilber (talk) 19:03, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I appreciate this is a long-dormant thread, but I’m hoping to set aside some time to focus on improving this article soon, and this issue will undoubtedly arise in the process.
 * When it does, I will try to incorporate and/or adhere to the issues and citation practices you’ve raised here, because the questions at the heart of this discussion strike me as fundamental to the article:
 * Should we report selected statistical findings directly from primary sources?
 * If yes, how can we mitigate the risk of slipping into synthesis or original research?
 * Should we use terms like “risk factor” — from which readers will likely draw inferences of causality — when reporting statistically significant correlations between variables?
 * If yes, might it be wiser to refrain from doing so when the variables in question are politically salient identity characterises (in this case, gender)?
 * I have my own a priori commitments regarding the proper use of statistics in prose, but the subject matter is sufficiently sensitive that I would prefer to establish a consensus before making any potentially controversial changes. Foxmilder (talk) 06:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

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