by david allan van nostrand | Jan 18, 2021 | Misinformation traps, Shaky Science, Voodoo Statistics
Radium, a solid, is one of forty radioactive elements (uranium, plutonium are the best-known). Discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, it glows in the dark and has a half-life of 1,600 years. Its less-toxic cousin radon (originally called radium emanation) is...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 23, 2020 | Using Information, Voodoo Statistics
Ask any American to name the first soft drink that comes to mind, and most say Coca-Cola. Ask Americans what company they think of first when they think about auto insurance, and you’ll get many different answers (Allstate, Farmer’s, Geico, Liberty Mutual,...
by david allan van nostrand | Dec 30, 2019 | Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
Last week the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece that has Harry Anslinger grinning in his grave. They included the oft-cited statistic so old it has whiskers: 95% of heroin users began by smoking marijuana. This is a textbook example...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 7, 2019 | Misinformation traps, Voodoo Statistics, Young moderns
You know how you hear one story that makes a lot of sense and then you hear another that also makes a lot of sense but you’re bothered because taken together they don’t make any sense at all? Me, too. I examine research studies than most, and because they have...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 24, 2019 | Items in the News, Research, Surveys, Voodoo Statistics
Readers have asked me to demonstrate how I go about reading a study. We don’t use privately-funded studies as examples, so I’ve been waiting for something interesting to show up in the public domain where we all have free access to the information. A little...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 17, 2019 | Unintended Consequences, Using Information, Voodoo Statistics
Volume of ramp is 1920cu in vs 3 cu in for test. If you saw those exact words, would you have cancelled the Challenger launch because conditions were dangerous and the likelihood of failure was high? Me neither, and here’s why. Westerners read from top to...
