That study is...not that rigorous, but I give them points for being clear about it.
"The downward step change was not apparent when the intervention point was moved back to the beginning of 1998."
"Despite the apparent benefits of the 1998 legislation, there continues to be a considerable number of deaths each year due to paracetamol poisoning"
"One limitation of this study was that we only used data for deaths for poisoning with paracetamol (with or without alcohol), in pure or compound form. We did not use data for deaths where paracetamol was consumed with other drugs."
They had to take the available data and massage it like a Thai masseuse to find what they were looking for.
Not to mention they estimate a decrease of 7 deaths per year, where the post-change level is 121 deaths per year. That's a 5% change, so it's not surprising they had to look at the data a number of ways to even find a change.
"The downward step change was not apparent when the intervention point was moved back to the beginning of 1998."
"Despite the apparent benefits of the 1998 legislation, there continues to be a considerable number of deaths each year due to paracetamol poisoning"
"One limitation of this study was that we only used data for deaths for poisoning with paracetamol (with or without alcohol), in pure or compound form. We did not use data for deaths where paracetamol was consumed with other drugs."
They had to take the available data and massage it like a Thai masseuse to find what they were looking for.
Not to mention they estimate a decrease of 7 deaths per year, where the post-change level is 121 deaths per year. That's a 5% change, so it's not surprising they had to look at the data a number of ways to even find a change.