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Sure, The Daily Mail, just like any other mainstream news source creates sensationalist headlines to shock you into reading. That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate. Nor should it prevent us from having an on-topic conversation about something more in-depth.



The Daily Mail is more than just sensationalist. Not quite as bad as today's Daily Express headline though:

http://www.express.co.uk/ourpaper/view/2010-07-08


>That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate.

No, but it does make it statistically more likely that they are inaccurate. It's known as 'study selection bias'.


Statistics should only be applied to fairly uniform and understandable phenomena.

Applying statistical likelihood in this instance is stretching the bounds of statistics considerably more than The Daily Mail stretched them.


No, applying statistical methods to this instance is unreasonable. Observing that selection bias skews the probabilities involved is perfectly reasonable, and indeed almost necessary to rational discussion.




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