Do we have enough good data to make evidence based choices for smoke alarms?

Joseph M. Fleming, Boston Fire Department, argues that we don’t. In his presentation at SupDet 2016, “Improving Data Collection of Smoke Alarms in Fires,” Fleming points out the investigators may be prone to bias, assuming fire alarms did or didn’t go off based on their expectations regarding survival likelihood. If no one escapes, they might simply assume that the alarm was not triggered. Investigators may even code the NFIRS Detector Operation Field as “failed to operate” or “undetermined” based on their assumptions despite witness testimony to the contrary. Regarding the “Detector Failure Reason” coding, he states, “Most fire chiefs are...