It's not just the newspapers, either. Numbers crop up in adverts, health warnings and speeches made by politicians, too. But do the figures add up? And do we trust them?
Not really, according to, yes, another set of stats that dropped into the Independent's inbox last month.
A survey in Britain by the Office for National Statistics found that only 36 per cent of people asked thought that official figures were "generally accurate". Meanwhile, a 2007 poll of trust in government statistics by the European Commission ranked Britain 27th out of 27 countries.
Last week, a statistics watchdog was set up to tackle this apparent crisis in confidence. The UK Statistics Authority has the job of ensuring statistics are correct and free from government spin. Every day, its website will provide links to the raw data backing up government statistics, and the authority will, warns its chairman, Sir Michael Scholar, "name and shame" ministers who spin them beyond recognition...
...To name and shame some of the worst offenders, the Independent has trawled the archives for classic examples of "junk statistics", from the poorly worded reports to deliberate massaging of official figures, and asked McConway to read between the lines...
..."Falling coconuts kill 150 people a year"
In 2002, in an article about the uprooting of coconut trees by lawsuit-wary Australian officials, the Daily Telegraph reported: "Coconuts ... kill about 150 people worldwide each year, making them more dangerous than sharks." The figure appeared again in a press release issued by a travel insurance firm assuring holidaymakers they would be covered, should they be struck by a coconut.
The reports suggested the figure of 150 came from a Canadian professor but his paper on coconut injuries did not posit a death toll. Attempts to trace the origin of the figure have failed.
The case echoes a similar legend - the belief that we should drink eight glasses of water a day. University of Pennsylvania researchers recently searched for the source. Their conclusion: "It is unclear where this recommendation came from."...
Now, for the 'proof':
Special attributes of everything that was, or is, recognised to be "holy": - English version (polska wersja ponizej w nastepnym wpisie)
kwiecień 16, 2008 by totalizm
Motto: "Everything that is recognised to be 'holy' displays various attributes which just cannot be explained on basis of atheistic science."
A rather extraordinary class of scientific evidence for the existence of God, is the difference between attributes of substances or objects which in past were called "holy", and attributes of other similar substances or objects which were NOT considered to be holy. For example, let us consider attributes of such "holy" substances and objects, as: (1) "daily bread" (by the Christian religion considered to be a representation of the body of Christ), (2) "coconuts", (3) "drinking water" (by first Christians used for christening, while by pagans utilised in water dowsing), (4) "red wine" (considered to represent the blood of Jesus). If one compares their attributes with attributes of other very similar substances or objects, e.g. with attributes of: (1n) white bread or buns, (2n) fruits of tropical durian, (3n) undrinkable water, (4n) white wine, then outcomes of this comparison become very meaningful. Namely, it then turns out that everything that in past was described as "holy" actually displays attributes which are beneficial to people at many levels...
...(2) The fact that coconuts never fall on heads of people, in spite that in light of statistics there should be cases of falling coconuts hitting some people in heads. As I explained this on a separate web page "fruit.htm" [ http://www.totalizm.net/fruit.htm ] - about tropical fruits from the area of Pacific, "in many tropical countries coconut palms are considered to be 'holy trees'" which were designed especially by God to satisfy all basic needs of people. (Notice that the holiness of coconuts is recognised in there in a similar manner as in old Europe the holiness of "daily bread" was practiced.) The holiness of coconut palms proves itself because e.g. on small oceanic islands, on which is NOT growing anything else apart from this palm, in fact coconut palms are providers of everything. In some religions, e.g. Hinduism, gods receive gifts from coconuts. The Bible says that palm branches were placed in front of walking Jesus. This holiness of coconut palms is there also a source of the deep belief which prevails in countries in which coconuts grow, namely that in order to NOT harm people heavy "coconuts never fall onto heads of humans". Actually in many tropical countries, e.g. in Malaysia, locals are saying that "coconut palms have eyes" - thus they never drop a coconut on heads of humans. I personally was very intrigued by this belief. So whenever I had an opportunity to visit an area where coconut palms grow, I always asked locals whether they know a case that a coconut fell on someone's head. I must confirm here, that in spite of my wide and many years long asking "I never encountered a case that someone knew someone else on the head of whom a coconut fell". Such a case would be quite well-known, because the large weight of coconuts combined with the significant height of coconut palms, would cause that the fell of a coconut on someone's head would kill such unfortunate person. Of course, this lack of cases when coconuts fall on human heads is something extraordinary and it should be explained by the "holiness" of the palm. After all, other (non-holy) trees drop their fruits completely at random, in this on human heads. I myself remember a case when a falling apple hit me in the head - fortunately was ripe and soft. In Malaysia grows a tasty fruit which just has a size of coconuts - it is called "durian". It is commonly known there, that at the time of durians' ripening, people should either keep far from these trees, or wear protective "hard hats". This is because heavy durian fruits fall "at random", including onto human heads. So it is nothing unusual to hear over there about cases of people getting hit by durian fruits.
Regrettably, someone clearly could NOT stand this extraordinary attribute of "holy palms" and decided to include also the holy coconuts into the "scientific atheism". Namely, that someone started to spread on the behalf of science the untrue claims that supposedly in the world every year dies from falling coconuts as much as 150 people. These claims make falling coconuts hypothetically even more dangerous than attacks of sharks. Such false claims were disseminated in so organised manner, that on their base various insurance companies started to develop their "coconut policies". Fortunately for the truth, some scientists decided to get to the bottom of the "research" on which the coconut deaths claims were based. Outcomes of their research were summarised later, amongst others, in the article "Lies, damn lies, and 150 coconut deaths" from page B9 of the New Zealand newspaper named "Weekend Herald", issue dated on Saturday, April 12, 2008. Searches of these scientists revealed, that the claims were made up in Australia in 2002. Only then were disseminated all over the world by an article in Daily Telegraph. At the beginning these claims referred to the publication of a Canadian professor, in which there was NO quantitative data on this subject, while the professor himself denied that he ever accumulated such quantitative data. Thus, in spite of the lies spread on this subject under a smoke screen of the official science, in fact coconuts never fall down on heads of people...
No comments:
Post a Comment