Lies, Damn Lies, and STATS
If you find yourself in need of a wee bit of debunkery, head over to STATS.org, a site that tears apart inaccurate "facts and figures" that are floating around threatening to become conventional wisdom against all logic and evidence. Some of their best stories of 2007:
Reacting to media reports in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome banned plastic water bottles because they contained "toxic" phthalates. What the Mayor and the media missed was that plastic bottles are made with a different chemical that happens to have a similar sounding name -- polyethylene terephthalate, a harmless polyester.
Left at the Altar by Statistics
In June, Time Out New York sent a wave of panic through the city's wannabe brides with a cover story claiming that there are 185,000 more single women than men in New York City. But the excess number of single women is due to the fact that men tend to die at younger ages than women do. In most younger age groups, there are significantly more men. For example there are 211,590 18 and 19-year old men in the NY Metro area compared to 201,282 women.
