Technically correct news reports

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, it is apparently a slow news day and various places are reporting on an 11-year-old girl finding a not especially remarkable trilobite fossil. In the first article I read, it was pointed out that “there are more than 600 trilobite species recorded by science.” There are more than 17,000 known species of trilobites. So while 17,000 is–technically–more than 600, it doesn’t really seem to be in the spirit of precision.

Any favorite examples of news items that have technically correct but not really useful points of information?

2

That report is the best kind of correct!

3

Well, she found it in Tennessee. Maybe the state of Tennessee only recognizes 600-odd species of trilobites* for reasons of Biblical inerrancy?

*See Paul’s Epistle to the Precambrians, Chapters 2-4.

4

I fucking hate it when the weatherman says, “It’s going to be Mild”.

What the fuck does that mean? :confused:

5

Hope that helps.

6

Still on weather, where I am they use the word “fine” to mean “no rain.”

Bugged me a bit during our five year drought that led to severe water restrictions. Fine? It’s not fine at all from my point of view!

But I guess they can’t use “dry” because that means “not humid.”

7

Not at all. Temps can range here from -10 to 103.

What is “not cold” to you?

Me? About 45. My wife? About 84.

8

Tucker Carlson can easily win this thread.

He recently covered, during prime time, the story that pandas are strong enough to kill a human (and how fortunate we are that they are not aggressive).

The story was so important he didn’t get a chance to talk about the raid of Cohen’s offices, that was the big news story everywhere else.

9

Anything of the form “X may have happened”. Unless what happened was previously thought to be impossible logically (factorizing a prime number) or physically (moving faster than the speed of light in any reference frame), it’s not very informative.

10

There were some recent stories about how it was 100% certain the Earth was going to be hit by a big rock and wipe out civilization. I didn’t read the stories, so have no idea if they qualified that prediction by, say, giving the odds of that happening in some limited time span. The headlines themselves were pure scaremongering. I can’t find the articles at Google News, so perhaps someone came to their senses and removed them.

11

Funny you ask. I just found a mystifying one on Wikipedia, and was trying to think of a placed to park my question here. Article on Handedness. The opening paragraph passes along the following:

. Studies suggest that 70–95% of the world population is right-handed. Studies suggest that approximately 10% of the world population is left-handed.
Cross-dominance or Mixed-handedness is the change of hand preference between tasks. This is uncommon in the population with about a 1% prevalence. Handedness - Wikipedia

OK. It looks like 100 - 10 - 1 = Approximately 70-95.

Jesus. How hard can it be to find out how many people are right handed, with “studies suggesting” more precisely than that?

12

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No other brand of worthless placebo is more effective than this worthless placebo.

13

It’s a standard term for a standard concept. Nitpicking it doesn’t make it meaningless. Most people understand what it means.

14

Obligatory xkcd: xkcd: Advertising

My favorite technically correct headline was on inauguration day with a picture of the Trumps and Obamas at the White House: “White billionaire takes federally subsidized housing from black family”