alt Hacker NewsUnqualified use of the word "predicts" is a little bit of a stretch in this editorialized title.
The study doesn't predict suicide attempts out of some type of biometric or otherwise observable data or surveillance information, it's predicting it from a self-survey. The actual journal article title tells the story much better:
"Using smartphone surveys to predict next-week suicide attempts"
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Also, "most." Presumably most attempters were not participating in the study's surveys, so it would be impossible for the study to predict for them.
> The strongest and most consistent predictors of next-week SA included within-study history of SREs (from adult lasso regression: OR = 1.47) and self-reported agitation (OR = 1.11), whereas odds of next-week SA were decreased for surveys submitted on weekends (OR = 0.87) and in the context of feelings that one could resist suicidal urges (OR = 0.88–0.96).
It seems a little silly, that suicide-relared events are well predicted by people announcing their nearness to suicide. It's useful in the sense that it shows that people, at least those people who consented to being monitored, which is a major confounder, are announcing their intent to anyone who is listening.
Uh, sounds like a prediction to me? It’s not “not a prediction” just because the prediction is not made on a certain type of data.
I don’t think you realize how often depressed people say they will but don’t commit suicide, and also being able to know when is quite remarkable - I think this study is pretty interesting, and not as obvious as you think it is.