Sky News, The Daily Mail and other media sources are today reporting the existence of a potential "death cult" in South Wales.
The copycat suicides of seven young people in a Welsh town have sparked fears of an internet death cult. All the victims - aged between 17 and 27 - were from Bridgend and hanged themselves within the past year. Some knew each other while several had posted their profiles on networking site Bebo.
These deaths are a tragedy, and I offer my condolences to the families for the loss of their loved ones. But is there really evidence for the existence of a "death cult"?
A quick precis for the uninitiated: Bebo is a Social Networking tool for the post-literate generation, with a high take-up amongst young adults in Britain. Some suggest a class divide between high-income Facebook/MySpace users and low-income Bebo users, although there is no particular evidence to support this. Certainly, Bebo is a very easy way to throw up a personal web-site and create links to your friends.
There are several reasons to be sceptical that these deaths imply the existence of a "death cult". The obvious logical flaw is to confuse correlation with causation. The contention of the Police and the Media is that the suicide of seven young people with Bebo pages, in a given area, is unusual. But most young people in the UK participate in some form of online Social Network. And Bebo is - by some measures - the most popular Social Networking tool. Therefore it is not unreasonable that an entirely random collection of seven British young people would be Bebo users, regardless of any other commonality between them.
So the real question is: Are the 7 suicides unusual?
Bridgend is both a town and a county, with a population of respectively 40,000 and 130,000. If we assume that the seven people do in fact all live in the town, then should we regard seven deaths in a population of forty thousand as more than an ordinary tragedy?
The Daily Mail reports:
Local people fear the hangings are linked to a chilling internet cult which has become "a cool thing to do" in the town.
The UK suicide rate for people between 15-44 is around 17.5 deaths per 100.000. Therefore we might expect the average annual death rate from suicide in the town of Bridgend to be around 7 incidents. But looking at the biographical data, many of these young people did not live in the town of Bridgend, but the county of Bridgend.
- David Crole (18) from Porthcawl, near Bridgend.
- David Dilling (19) from Pyle, a village near Bridgend.
- Thomas Davies - from North Cornelly, Bridgend.
- Zachary Barnes (17) from Wildmill, Bridgend.
- Liam Clarke (20) from Bridgend
- Gareth Morgan (27) from Bridgend
- Natasha Randall (17) from Blaengarw, Bridgend.
And if we look at the dates of their deaths:
- David Crole (18) -
January 2007 September 2006 (Update, Mr Crole died around Sept 2006, but his body wasn't found until Jan 2007)
- David Dilling - February 2007
- Thomas Davies - February 2007
- Zachary Barnes (17) - August 2007
- Liam Clarke (20) - December 2007
- Gareth Morgan (27) - January 2008
- Natasha Randall (17) - January 2008
we see that there is nothing in this data to suggest any sort of pattern. This is even more obvious is we look at the given places of residence on a map:
RED X
BLUE 1
Name: David Crole
Age: 18
Date of Death: September 2006
Residence: Porthcawl, near Bridgend.
BLUE 2
Name: David Dilling
Age: 19
Date of Death: February 2007
Residence: Pyle, near Bridgend.
BLUE 3
Name: Thomas Davies
Age: 20
Date of Death: February 2007
Residence: North Cornelly, Bridgend.
BLUE 4
Name: Zachary Barnes
Age: 17
Date of Death: August 2007
Residence: Wildmill, Bridgend.
BLUE 5
Name: Liam Clarke
Age: 20
Date of Death: December 2007
Residence: Bridgend
BLUE 6
Name: Gareth Morgan
Age: 27
Date of Death: January 2007
Residence: Bridgend
BLUE 7
Name: Natasha Randall
Age: 17
Date of Death: January 2007
Residence: from Blaengarw, Bridgend.
INVISIBLE
Although this may not be of any comfort to the families of those lost, the people of Bridgend can at least be reassured that this "Death Cult" is an invention of the media. It is disappointing to see that South Wales Police are colluding in the scaremongering.
Update: Massive coverage on Channel 4 and ITV as well. For goodness sake, does no one do basic research anymore?
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