THE DUBIOUS DATA 2000 AWARDS
The Top Ten Silliest, Most Misleading Stories of the New Millennium(at least, we think it's ten, and we're pretty sure that the Millennium has already started)
Yes readers, it's that time of year again when we look back with amusement at the glitches and goofs served up by the media over the last twelve months. It was a banner year for dubiousity, ranging from failed presidential pop quizzes (Vajpayee, Lee, and um, that general from Pakistan -- we knew that) to the amazing electoral counting catastrophe (we thought those were boxes of Florida grapefruit; turns out that's just what happens to a pregnant chad). So, return with us now to those thrilling stories from yesteryear...
1). "Well, OK, maybe it's the SECOND time in 50 million years..."
The August 19 New York Times front page was a real scorcher - complete with color photograph. "The North Pole is melting" read the first sentence. It seems tourists on a Russian ice-breaker saw open water in the middle of the polar ice, clicked the shutter, and rushed right to The Times with "evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate." It was a sight "presumably never before seen by humans... the last time the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago." National Public Radio also heralded the news (Aug. 22), but their science reporter, Richard Harris, started to notice the story's own thin ice, and got a skeptical response from other Arctic experts. It turns out during a typical summer, about 90 percent of the high Arctic is covered with ice, but about 10 percent of the time there's open water over the pole. The Times started backtracking, and on August 29 revisited the entire matter with a Science Times article altering the claim and its link to global warming.
2). Perhaps you should stick to the swimsuit competition?
Could nuclear power plants be a cause of infant mortality? This charge was leveled in Washington, DC (Reuters Apr. 27) by activist groups coupled with the star power of supermodel Christie Brinkley. Though infant mortality rates have been in sharp decline at the same time that nuclear power spread around the country, the activists had an angle -- improvements in infant health were linked to the closing of nuclear plants. But a quick call to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) by Newsday reporter Earl Lane pulled the plug. An NCI study that examined 900,000 cancer deaths in counties near nuclear facilities showed that childhood deaths from diseases such as leukemia were actually higher before, not after, their construction. If anything, the facilities were associated with better infant health.
3). Migrating Monarchs Take Wrong Turn?
What was the notorious Butterfly Ballot doing in wintry Canada, so far from its Palm Beach electoral home? The December 7 issue of Nature presented research from a Canadian psychologist who offered ballot choices to shoppers at the Bonnie Doon Mall in Edmonton, Alberta. It seems that 3 out of 53 Canadian shoppers made the alleged "Buchanan error" on the ballot form; that is, they got confused and voted for the wrong candidate. The San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 1) and other papers were quick to net the story, reporting evidence of "systematic confusion" and arguing the data "call into question the validity of the presidential election results." A story with, er, wings, or just a lepidopteran let down?
It turns out the methodology was meandering. The shoppers were only a "convenience sample" not even representative of Canadians, much less Floridians. Second, the study acknowledged that "there was no relation between the amount of confusion and errors" made (so much for "systematic"). Besides, the Associated Press (Nov. 10) had already reported butterfly ballot "research" from Bossier City, Louisiana. Down there two fourth grade teachers had tested 22 kids on the same confusing format, with zero errors.
4). "So, have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
Reuters reported a poll (Feb. 4) which illustrated that "although most smokers in the US know that cigarettes can cause heart and lung disease, few have been able to kick the habit." In fact, out of the 70 percent of the sampled respondents who had ever tried to quit, none had succeeded. Unfortunately, this should have come as little surprise, since the poll specifically sampled "more than 1,000 adult smokers." No quitters allowed.
5). The View From... Lake Rudolf?
It's not exactly "Eurocentric," but there's definitely something wrong here. According to the BBC (Oct. 30), research into the last universal common ancestor of human males living today "gives an intriguing insight into the journey of our ancestors across the planet, from eastern Africa into the Middle East, then to southeast and southern Asia, then New Guinea and Australia, and finally to Europe and Central Asia" (emphasis added)
It seems that modern man hasn't yet reached North or South America. Perhaps the controversy over Kennewick Man goes deeper than we think.
6). Kindergarten Cop-out
An Associated Press story, "Federal study shows kindergarten improves all young minds" (Dec. 4), seemed to suggest that kindergarten was a very good thing. From a sample of 22,000 children who attended kindergarten, the study found that five times as many of them could do simple sums as in the previous year.
But the fifth paragraph of the story reveals how the study doesn't really prove anything about children's education in general: "The Education Department-funded study offers no comparison with children who do not attend kindergarten." In other words, we don't know whether kindergarten-educated children are better off than other children. All the study showed was that kindergarten helps educate children who are in kindergarten. But "all young minds?" - we just don't know.
7). Fuzzy Math
Nobody at the AP raised an eyebrow when its Oct. 28 story, "Clinton signs law to combat violence against women," repeated the President's claim, "'Every 12 seconds, another woman is beaten,' he said. 'That's nearly 900,000 victims every year.'"
Errr, no. One incident every twelve seconds translates to over two and one half million incidents a year. Or, looked at the other way, 900,000 incidents a year is one every 35 seconds. Either way, those two figures don't add up.
8). Cashew, Cashew, We All Fall Down
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman found another way to criticize anti-globalization protestors in his Apr. 19 column, "A Real Nut Case." He claimed that the World Bank's intervention in Mozambique's cashew industry benefitted the country's poor farmers, who had suffered compared with the nation's 10,000 nut processing workers.
Unfortunately for Mr. Krugman, and for Mozambique as well, investigations later in the year by the Washington Post ("A Less Than Helpful Hand; World Bank, IMF Blamed for Fall of Mozambican Cashew Industry," Oct. 18) and Knight Ridder ("World Bank Policies Had Mixed Results in Mozambique," Sep. 17) found that the World Bank's policies had not only put over 7,500 factory workers out of a job in one of the world's poorest countries, but that the farmers who were supposed to have benefitted had lost out to nut speculators, many of them foreign. (Thanks to TomPaine.com for initially drawing our attention to this one).
9). Ancestral Vices
A sense of perspective is important when you deal with statistics. A spokesman for the White House Office of Drug Control Policy clearly lost his when he responded to a study on the number of drug offenders in prison by saying, "Over the same period of time, drug use has gone down and crime is at an all-time low." ("Drug Offenders Jailed at High Rate, AP, Jul. 27)
While crime has gone down recently, it still has not reached the low levels it began to leave behind in the late Sixties. Murder rates are lower than in the gangster-ridden 1920's and 1930's, but far above the levels of the 1950's and the first two decades of the century.
Of course, we don't have the data to talk about crime levels before that, but perhaps the spokesman had something else in mind. When Cain murdered Abel, after all, the homicide rate peaked at 25,000 per 100,000 individuals. And the Garden of Eden suffered a 50 percent larceny rate, which was, naturally, motivated by a desire for illegal substances.
10). And Finally...
"Hyper-hyperbole. It's massive!"-article title in the UK newspaper The Observer, Feb. 27, criticizing news media which make exaggerated claims to bolster their arguments. "It's apocalypse now as world boils over."-headline in the same newspaper, same day.
The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) is a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. examines the way that scientific, quantitative, and social research are presented by the media.
Contact:Howard FienbergStatistical Assessment Service202-223-3193http://www.stats.org
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