02/02/2008 00:00:00
UK: Bad Science - Cannabis casualties, hybrid cars, and cubic litres
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There are no difficult ideas in this column. Like, for example, when I
tell you about the Daily Telegraph front page headline which says "Abuse
of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital", and it turns out they're
actually quoting a figure from a report on the number of people having
contact with any drug treatment service of any variety. The colossal
majority of these, of course, are outpatient appointments for drugs
counselling, not hospital admissions. So there are not 500 people a week
suddenly being put into hospital by cannabis. But this is not a news
story: like their recurring dodgy abortion figures, it is the venal
moralising of a passing puritan, dressed up in posh numbers.
Similarly, there's nothing very complicated about a report from CNW
Marketing in Oregon, which the Independent's motoring correspondent has
now quoted twice in his attempt to demonstrate that Hummers, Jeeps, and
various other cars the size of a small caravan are - "in fact" - greener
than smaller hybrid cars like the Prius (because readers love a quirky
paradox).
CNW, a car industry marketing firm, manage to do this by making
calculations over the lifetime of a car. They decide that about 90% of
the environmental cost of a car's lifetime environmental impact is from
its manufacture and recycling, not the fuel it burns whilst tootling
around. This is the polar opposite of all other life-cycle analyses. CNW
include all kinds of funny things to make their numbers work, like the
erosion of the road surface of the people who travel to the car factory.
They also decide, for the purposes of their calculation, that people
will keep their giant, cyclist-killing Jeeps for twice as long as their
green hybrid cars, and if you think that is a leap of faith, they also
decide that Prius drivers will travel about half as many miles a year as
Jeep drivers.
This may be true if you observe the behaviour of people who choose to
buy these cars. But it's hard to see how it is a factor for anyone
making a new purchasing decision, since you're probably going to drive
as much as you're going to drive, and buying a 4x4 is not suddenly going
to turn you overnight into a chubby, middle-class parent driving your
children 400 yards to school. Although for those of us afflicted with a
disproportionate anality, the most infuriating thing about this report
is the contrast between its opaque methodology and its spurious,
four-figure accuracy. They confidently assert that your Hummer will last
"34.96 years", which is almost as irritating as this paper slipping into
bogusly accurate currency conversions for estimated figures, like last
week's "$56bn (£28.26bn) international food supplement industry".
I know I'm wrong to care. On the BBC news site "crews were hopeful the
20m cubic litres of water could be held back and not breach the dam
wall". And that'll be a struggle, since "cubic litres" are a
nine-dimensional measuring system, so the hyperdimensional water could
breach the dam in almost any one of the five other dimensions you
haven't noticed yet.
In the Metro they reckon "solving problems is really down to keeping an
open mind. Brain scans showed that volunteers who hit a mental block
during verbal tests gave off strong gamma rays, which are linked with
being focused and alert."
Gamma rays are produced by sub-atomic particle interactions, like
electron-positron annihilation or radioactive decay. They will sterilise
your brain very nicely, before the dead, irradiated neurons start to
grow over with scar tissue, and that may well affect concentration.
And meanwhile, in Elle magazine they're promoting the scientific
theories of yet another self-declared nutritional genius: "Marisa cited
flour and water as the two biggest problem foods. She gave us flour and
water and urged us to make a gloopy paste, with which we stuck pieces of
paper to the wall. Then she said this is what's stuck to our insides
when we eat pasta and bread."
They only do it to wind you up. If you close your eyes, it'll all go
away again.
· Please send your bad science to bad.science@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/02/badscience.pressandpublishing?gusrc=rss&feed=11
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=13235
Author:
The Guardian via UKCIA
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