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Editorial: “Hope and hype in the world of statistics“

TV kills, and so does socialised healthcare – that’s what the statistics say. Or do they? New Scientist explains how numbers can be turned into nonsense

TYPE the word “cancer” into the website search engine of the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper, and a wealth of information is just a mouse click away. Some of the reports are calming, most alarming – and all come with figures to back them up. Women who use talcum powder are 40 per cent more likely to develop ovarian cancer, says research. Cancer survival rates in the UK are among the worst in Europe, according to a study. The incidence of bowel cancer among the under-30s has soared by 120 per cent in 10 years, astonishing figures show.

The figures might make us worry for our health, but somehow we feel the better for their existence. Numbers help us make sense of the world: they speak of fact and certainty and the onward march of science. If you can put a number on a problem, then its extent is known and its impact can be circumscribed.

Yet that sense of solid certainty is all too often illusory. Statistics can be notoriously slippery, easily misused by the unscrupulous or misinterpreted by the unwary. Nowhere is that more true than in the field of human health.

That’s because the benefits of a particular medical treatment are often not obvious. “There are very few miracle cures. Most treatments require careful science to determine if there is any benefit and how big the benefit is,” says …