The Critical Thinking Blog

The article from the Evening Standard made a headline that could possibly display signs of a ‘fake story’.
It is using the NHS to complete the story about Sadiq Khan’s new proposal for healthy streets.
Random statistics are thrown into the article without referring to how and who found them. Even though it mentions a ‘transport for london analysis’ and ‘tfl research’ it is untraceable to fact check the accuracy of the statistics. Therefore the correlation made with the NHS and the minutes dedicated to walking or cycling is not something readers cannot take serious.

Also, the headline says the NHS could save 1.7bn from 20 mins of cycling or walking a day, but does it mean it saves this amount for a year? a month? a day? It does not make it specific.

Another flaw to this article is the stats used about how many people would need treatment. How do we know this is down to 20 minutes of walking and cycling? There may be other factors that can result in less people needing treatment, for example not smoking or drinking alcohol. These are huge statistics, not just hundreds but thousands but how did they find this? Surely it is not a complete accurate measure? Was it an average or a median? What population was this gathered from?

For all we know this can be made up statistics unless there is some back up to show how the two statistics correlate which is yet to be discovered.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/nhs-could-save-17bn-if-londoners-walked-or-cycled-for-20-minutes-a-day-a3468396.html

Welcome to the Critical Thinking blog! Part of what the Critical Thinking course is about is learning how to understand the numbers and statistics that surround us in our everyday lives.The modern world is awash with numerical claims:

Politicians use numbers to tell us that they’re doing the right thing (or that their opponents are doing the wrong thing).

Journalists use numbers to tell us what’s happening in the world.

Companies use numbers to tell us why their product is the best.

Charities use numbers to tell us why their causes need our support.

Doctors use numbers to tell us about what’s good and bad for us.

Sometimes these numbers are accurate and useful. Too often they are not. We all need to be able to tell the difference.

As part of this course, we want students on the Critical Thinking course to submit at least one critique of a statistical claim they have come across in the news or in their everyday lives. This can be from a news article, an advert, a Facebook post, a politician’s speech or statement – anywhere really. Try to figure out (using the skills you’re learning from the course) whether the statistical claim being made holds up, or if it is in fact numerical nonsense. Write up your findings as a blog post, email them to your seminar leaders, and they’ll be posted here here.

For some idea of how this type of thing is done, I recommend looking at some of the work over at FullFact (UK), Politifact (US), and Ben Goldacre’s badscience.net (this has not been updated in a while, but there’s a big archive of stuff). Also have a listen to Radio 4’s More or Less podcast.

Good luck, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you find!