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It’s time for another whimsical Tuesday Turnip Google search wherein I type a random phrase and we see what kind of interesting factoids “turn-up.”
Today I typed in “the study showed that” – unearthing the following:
- Experts say the study shows that orangutans are on an intellectual par with chimpanzees
- A study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.
- The study shows that you can still live healthy until age 85 if you live right
- The study shows that Hispanics visit quick-serve restaurants more than other types of restaurants, reporting an average of 2.2 meals eaten at or taken from these establishments in the week prior to the survey
- Significantly, the study shows that hummingbirds exhibit two of the fundamental aspects of episodic-like memory – where and when a particular event happened – the kind of memory for specific events often thought to be exclusive to humans.
- The study shows that children living in the five states with the highest levels of gun ownership were 16 times more likely to die from unintentional firearm injury, seven times more likely to die from firearm suicide, and three times more likely to die from firearm homicide than children in the five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership.
- The study shows that warming and extreme weather affect the breeding and range of disease vectors such as mosquitoes responsible for malaria
- For baby boomers earning $100000 or more, the study shows that more than 9 in 10 are homeowners
- The study shows that firms still have a lot of basic work to do to make women of color feel welcome — such as making sure they’re in compliance with anti-harassment laws.
- The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.
- The study shows that income gaps both between rich and poor and between the rich and the middle class widened in the 1980s and 1990s alike and reached their widest point on record in 1997
The firearms study is ridiculous. What that study actually shows is that firearms are morelikely to be used in lower economic states, despite what the article said. Secondly the crime rates were, in most cases, higher in the non-gun owner states than in the five listed. The study might just as easily had read (if all factors had properly been taken into consideration following proper use of the scientific method rather than a skewing of evidence) the five states with the lowest gun ownership have higher stabbing, poisoning and gang related murders, accidents and suicides than the five gun states.
These right-wing/left-wing studies are designed to “prove” the point they set out to make in the first place.
to paraphrse Twain, there are three types of lies – Lies, Damn Lies and pseudo-scientific studies.
posted by lee on 12-6-2006 at 5:03 pm