In a post entitled “FARCE: FARS Album Release Coincidence Examination,” Gaurav Sood writes: Replication and extended analysis of Patel, Worsham, Liu & Jena (2026), “Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities,” NBER Working Paper 34866. Key Findings 1. The Statistical Effect Is Real Traffic fatalities are elevated on major album release days: Estimator Effect (Tier 1) SE t-stat Local (±10 day)* +23.0 deaths 5.1 4.5 Donut-global +16.2 deaths 5.1 3.2 Forecast +22.8 deaths 4.9 4.6 . . . 2. But The Causal Story Doesn’t Hold Up No dose-response relationship: Album Streams Effect Tortured Poets (2024) 313M -2 deaths Her Loss (2022) 97M +63 deaths Midnights (2022) 185M +5 deaths . . . Out-of-sample replication fails (2023-2024): The paper analyzed 2017-2022 releases. We tested 7 major 2023-2024 albums as a true out-of-sample test: Album Streams Effect Tortured Poets 313M -2.1 UTOPIA 128M +10.5 For All The Dogs 109M -12.8 Cowboy Carter 76M -0.4 Hit Me Hard and Soft 73M +7.0…
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