Ok I unfortunately don't have the time to listen to the whole episode, but whatever hard data is included in the text of the article doesn't look to fit the title.
> the suicide rate in Sri Lanka has dropped significantly. So, from 57 deaths per 100,000 population in ’95, it has dropped now to 17. This is a 70% reduction. So, it’s a very significant success, in fact the greatest decrease in suicide rate ever seen.
So the first thing we see is that 70% reduction amounts to the suicide rate dropping from 0.057% to 0.017%. That would still put Sri Lanka at or near the top (=most suicidal) according to Wikipedia [1], so I guess it's pretty significant; it's just that I always view relative percentages with suspicion ("we reduced the death rate by INFINITY percent!" "oh yeah you saved one life").
Second, if the rate of suicide decreased by 70% in 20 years, that doesn't mean that it can be 100% percent attributed to lack of pesticides (in fact, I cannot think of any scenario where that could be true). 20 years is a lot of time, especially in Asia, so I don't know, maybe it was just the improvement of the quality of life, or (mental) health-care? Edit: I hope the recording sheds more light on why they attribute any part of the drop to lack of pesticides...
Anyways, it's discouraging, and therefore I judge the title as "click-bait-y".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
> the suicide rate in Sri Lanka has dropped significantly. So, from 57 deaths per 100,000 population in ’95, it has dropped now to 17. This is a 70% reduction. So, it’s a very significant success, in fact the greatest decrease in suicide rate ever seen.
So the first thing we see is that 70% reduction amounts to the suicide rate dropping from 0.057% to 0.017%. That would still put Sri Lanka at or near the top (=most suicidal) according to Wikipedia [1], so I guess it's pretty significant; it's just that I always view relative percentages with suspicion ("we reduced the death rate by INFINITY percent!" "oh yeah you saved one life").
Second, if the rate of suicide decreased by 70% in 20 years, that doesn't mean that it can be 100% percent attributed to lack of pesticides (in fact, I cannot think of any scenario where that could be true). 20 years is a lot of time, especially in Asia, so I don't know, maybe it was just the improvement of the quality of life, or (mental) health-care? Edit: I hope the recording sheds more light on why they attribute any part of the drop to lack of pesticides...
Anyways, it's discouraging, and therefore I judge the title as "click-bait-y".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...