Steve Jobs delayed treatment for his pancreatic cancer Swaine, J. (2011, Oct. 21). Steve Jobs “regretted trying to beat cancer with alternative medicine for so long.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-Jobs-regretted-trying-to-beat-cancer-with-alternative-medicine-for-so-long.html.
an article in Forbes that claims Rees, N. (2009, Aug. 13). Policing word abuse. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/12/nigel-rees-misquotes-opinions-rees.html.
Respectfully Quoted, a dictionary of quotations Platt, S., ed. (1989). Respectfully Quoted. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. For sale by the Supt. of Docs., USGPO.
That book reports various formulations Billings, J. (1874). Everybody’s Friend, or Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor. Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company.
humans had twenty-four pairs of chromosomes instead of twenty-three Gartler, S. M. (2006). The chromosome number in humans: a brief history. Nature Reviews Genetics, 7, 655–660. http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/The-chromosome-number-in-humans-a-brief-15575. Glass, B. (1990). Theophilus Shickel Painter. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/painter-theophilus-shickel.pdf. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
If people in the arts and humanities have won a prize Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Joni Mitchell can be considered experts in songwriting. Although they do not hold university positions, university scholars have written books and articles about them, and Mr. Simon and Mr. Wonder were recognized by the president of the United States with Kennedy Center Honors, reserved for individuals who have made great contributions to performing arts. Ms. Mitchell received an honorary doctorate of music and won the Polaris Music Prize.
Some people, including Noam Chomsky, have argued Chomsky, N. (2015, May 25). The New York Times is pure propaganda. Salon. http://www.salon.com/2015/05/25/noam_chomsky_the_new_york_times_is_pure_proganda_partner/.
Achbar, M., Symansky, A., & Wintonick, P. (Producers), and Achbar, M., & Wintonick, P. (Directors). (1992). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Motion picture). USA: BuyIndies.com Inc. and Zeitgeist Films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsiBl2CaDFg.
A 2011 fake tweet Melendez, E. D. (2013, Feb. 1). Twitter stock market hoax draws attention of regulators. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/twitter-stock-market-hoax_n_2601753.html; http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/.
“The use of false rumors and news reports” Farrell, M. (2015, July 14). Twitter shares hit by takeover hoax. Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-shares-hit-by-takeover-hoax-1436918683.
Jonathan Capehart wrote a story (2010, Sept. 7). Washington Post writer falls for fake congressman Twitter account. Huffington Post, updated Sept. 7, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/07/washington-post-writer-fa_n_707132.html; http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/09/obama_deficits_and_the_ditch.html.
Who is behind it? This is taken verbatim from The Organized Mind. Levitin, D. J. (2014). The Organized Mind. New York: Dutton.
2014 congressional race for Florida’s thirteenth district Leary, A. (2014, Feb. 4). Misleading GOP website took donation meant for Alex Sink. Tampa Bay Times. http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/misleading-gop-website-took-donation-meant-for-alex-sink/2164138.
A court case ruled that Degil Pink, D. (2013). Deceiving domain names not allowed. Wickwire Holm. http://www.wickwireholm.com/Portals/0/newsletter/BLU%20Newsletter%20-%20January%202013%20-%20Deceiving%20Domain%20Names%20Not%20Allowed.pdf; Bonni, S. (2014, June 24). The tort of domain name passing off. Charity Law Bulletin 342, Carters Professional Corporation. http://www.carters.ca/pub/bulletin/charity/2014/chylb342.htm.
vendor operated the website GetCanadaDrugs.com https://www.canadadrugs.com/; https://www.getcanadadrugs.com/ (no longer available); Naud, M. (n.d.). Registered trade-mark canadadrugs.com found deceptively misdescriptive. ROBIC. http://www.robic.ca/admin/pdf/682/293.045E-MNA2007.pdf.
MartinLutherKing.org contains is a shameful assortment The inflammatory quote from the website comes from the book by Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire, but the author notes that he did not hear the tapes himself, he took them from three FBI agents who reported them to him.
Stormfront, a white-supremacy, neo-Nazi hate group. Sources which identify Stormfront as the Internet’s “first hate site” include:
Levin, B. (2003). “Cyberhate: A legal and historical analysis of extremists’ use of computer networks in America,” in Perry, B., ed., Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader. New York: Routledge, p. 363.
Ryan, N. (2004). Into a World of Hate: A Journey Among the Extreme Right. New York: Routledge, p. 80.
Samuels, S. (1997). “Is the Holocaust unique?,” in Rosenbaum, Alan S., ed., Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, p. 218.
Bolaffi, G.; et al., eds (2002). Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity and Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p. 254.
Energy-drink company Red Bull paid O’Reilly, L. (2014, Oct. 8). Red Bull will pay $10 to customers disappointed the drink didn’t actually give them “wings.” http://www.businessinsider.com/red-bull-settles-false-advertising-lawsuit-for-13-million-2014-10.
Target agreed to pay $3.9 million Associated Press. (2015, Feb. 11). Target agrees to pay $3.9 million in false-advertising lawsuit. http://journalrecord.com/2015/02/11/target-agrees-to-pay-3-9-million-in-false-advertising-lawsuit-law/.
Kellogg’s paid $4 million to settle Federal Trade Commission. (2009, April 20). Kellogg settles FTC charges that ads for Frosted Mini-Wheats were false [Press release]. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2009/04/kellogg-settles-ftc-charges-ads-frosted-mini-wheats-were-false.
The Washington Post also runs a fact-checking site https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/.
Politifact summarized its findings Carroll, L. (2015, Nov. 22). Fact-checking Trump’s claim that thousands in New Jersey cheered when World Trade Center tumbled. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/.
only one grandparent was born abroad Sanders, K. (2015, April 16). In Iowa, Hillary Clinton claims “all my grandparents” came to the U.S. from foreign countries. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/16/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-flubs-familys-immigration-history-/.
322,000,000 The population of the United States, as of this writing. http://www.census.gov/popclock/.
For coronary heart disease American Heart Association (2015). AHA Statistical Update. Circulation, 131, p. 434–441. I thank McGill University Librarians Robin Canuel and Genevieve Gore for help in finding these statistics.
In 1968, Will and Ariel Durant wrote Durant, W., & Durant, A. (1968). The Lessons of History. New York: Simon & Schuster.
The FBI announced in 2015 Federal Bureau of Investigation (2015, April 20). FBI testimony on microscopic hair analysis contained errors in at least 90 percent of cases in ongoing review [Press release]. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-microscopic-hair-analysis-contained-errors-in-at-least-90-percent-of-cases-in-ongoing-review.
Without these pieces of information Aitken, C. G. G., & Taroni, F. (2004). Statistics and the Evaluation of Evidence for Forensic Scientists, 2nd ed. Chicester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, p. 95, citing Friedman, R. D. (1996). Assessing Evidence. Michigan Law Review, 94(6), 1810–1838.
In one case in the U.K. R v. Dennis John Adams, (1996) 2 Cr App R, 467;
And Aitken, C. (2003). Statistical techniques and their role in evidence interpretation. In Payne-James, J., Busuttil, A., & Smock, W., eds., Forensic Medicine: Clinical and Pathological Aspects. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
the New York Times described a mysterious formation Blumenthal, R. (2015, Nov. 3). Built by the ancients, seen from space. New York Times, p. D2.
How much more productive and creative might she have been I thank Stephen Kosslyn for sharing a version of this example with me.
Two twins were separated at birth Grimes, W. (2015, Nov. 13). Jack Yufe, a Jew whose twin was a nazi, dies at 82. New York Times, p. B8.
They were reunited twenty-one years later Much of this is taken verbatim from Grimes (2015), op. cit.
A statistician or behavioral geneticist would say Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, personal communication.
if you ask a hundred people in a room The formula is 1 − (1 − 1/25)100.
Paul McCartney and Dick Clark I thank Ron Mann for this observation.
Larger samples more accurately reflect Note that in a large sample, you are more likely to find an anomalous (outlier) observation than in a small sample, but when looking at the mean, the mean of the large sample is far more likely to reflect the true state of the world (because there are so many more observations that can swamp the anomalous one).
if the study was on the incidence of preterm births Krämer, W., & Gigerenzer, G. (2005). How to confuse with statistics or: the use and misuse of conditional probabilities. Statistical Science, 20(3), 223–230. See also Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preterm birth. http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pretermbirth.htm.
Consider a street game in which a hat Krämer, W., & Gigerenzer, G. (2005). Technically, they note, this is an incorrect enumeration of simple events in a Laplacian experiment in the subpopulation composed of the remaining possibilities.
similar mistakes were made by mathematical philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Ibid.
Counterknowledge, a term coined by Thompson, D. (2008). Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science, and Fake History. New York: W. W. Norton, p. 1.
Damian Thompson tells the story Thompson, D. (2008), op. cit.
Shot on a consumer-grade camera Trask, R. B. (1996). Photographic Memory: The Kennedy Assassination, November 22, 1963. Dallas: Sixth Floor Museum, p. 5.
A handful of unexplained anomalies Thanks to Michael Shermer for this.
The difference between a false theory This is a direct quote from Thompson, D. (2008), op. cit.
As Damian Thompson notes Thompson, D. (2008), op. cit., p. 17. The previous two sentences are from pp. 16–17.
die each year of stomach cancer National Cancer Institute. SEER stat fact sheets: stomach cancer. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/stomach.html.
than of unintentional drowning Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unintentional drowning: get the facts. http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html.
A front-page headline in the Times (U.K.) Smyth, C. (2015, Feb. 4). “Half of all Britons will get cancer during their lifetime.” Times. www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article4343681.ece.
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) reports that Boseley, S. (2015, Feb. 3). Half of people in Britain born after 1960 will get cancer, study shows. Guardian.
Heart disease is better controlled Griffiths, C., & Brock, A. (2003). Twentieth century mortality trends in England and Wales. Health Statistics Quarterly, 18(2), 5–17.
This is based on reports by a variety http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp; http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/tap-vs-bottled-water/faq-20058017; http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/07/is-tap-water-safer-than-bottled/index.htm; http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100310/why-tap-water-is-better/; http://abcnews.go.com/Business/study-bottled-water-safer-tap-water/story?id=87558; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9775158/Bottled-water-not-as-safe-as-tap-variety.html.
In New York City; Montreal; Flint, Michigan; and many other older cities Stockton, N. (2016, Jan. 29). Here’s how hard it will be to unpoison Flint’s water. Wired. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/heres-how-hard-it-will-be-to-unpoison-flints-water/.