The game of telephone is a game “…in which one person whispers a message to the ear of the next person through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Although the objective is to pass around the message without it becoming misheard and altered along the way, part of the enjoyment is that, regardless, this usually ends up happening. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with amusing or humorous effect.” (Wikipedia)
The same happens in journalism and science. One original factoid is cited by article A. The author of article B reads article A, rephrases the statement and cites it in his article. This creates a chain of sub-citations with a similar result as in the game of telephone. The final “fact” has not much to do with the original statement.
I consider it a minimum criterion of good journalism (or science for that matter) always to check the original source.
Today I read a statement I simply had to backtrack:
“You’re more likely to be killed by a piece of furniture than by a terrorist attack.” (in Is It Just Me, Or Is the World Going Crazy?- MarkManson.net.) Published on July 28, 2016, and written by Mark Manson.
Like every good blogger (he is not a journalist) he linked to his source, the following article:
You’re more likely to be fatally crushed by furniture than killed by a terrorist – The Washington Post published on November 23, 2015 by Andrew Shaver. Here the sentence in question reads:
“Consider, for instance, that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been no more likely to die at the hands of terrorists than being crushed to death by unstable televisions and furniture.”
Remarkable here is that this sentence is contradicted by the headline of the same article. “No more likely” turned into “more likely.” Mark must have fallen for the headline and missed the details in the text. I can’t blame him.
By the way, I wonder how you can get crushed by a TV? What type of TV are we even talking about? I’d have to get quite creative to get crushed by my flatscreen.
But let’s look at the source the Washington Post is linking to:
America Is a Safe Place – Council on Foreign Relations, published on February 24, 2012 by Micah Zenko. Here the paragraph reads:
“Since 9/11, a total of 238 American citizens have died from terrorist attacks or an average of 29 per year. To put that in some perspective, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the average American is as likely to be crushed to death by televisions or furniture as they are to be killed by a terrorist.
Wow, Council on Foreign Relations?! Now we have “as likely.” And I wonder if Terrorist is meant as an occupation here. Does being killed by a terrorist also include getting run over by someone who identifies as a terrorist on his way home from his non-terrorist day job?
Unfortunately, Micah’s link leads to a “Page not found error” on the website of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Fortunately, I found an article that mentions the original source. This article is titled “The Terrorism Statistics Every American Needs to Hear” – Centre for Research on Globalization published on May 19, 2014, Author unknown
“The 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center notes that Americans are just as likely to be “crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year” as they are to be killed by terrorists.”
Again it says “as likely”. What is also interesting is that the article doesn’t link to the report but to an article in The Atlantic: “Americans Are as Likely to Be Killed by Their Own Furniture as by Terrorism” also written by our friend Micah Zenko. He kept with his statement and links to the page with the error. The report must have been removed.
But I found it elsewhere. You can check yourself, here are two links to it:
Funny enough the word furniture does not even appear in the report. Neither is any statement to be found that comes even remotely close to the terrorists vs furniture comparison.
So I guess if Micah Zenko didn’t make up that statement he must have simply cited the wrong report. But I found another post which if it hadn’t been published in late 2015, could have been the original Terrorists vs furniture article. This one has numbers and a report that supports at least one of the numbers”
Terrorism in perspective: How about a war on furniture? – newsworks.org, written by Dick Polman. Dick brings in these two statements:
“According to post-9/11 stats compiled by the nonpartisan New America Foundation, the total number of Americans killed in “violent jihadist attacks” on domestic soil is … 45. According to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, the total number of Americans killed by falling furniture in the first decade of this century was … 92.”
I cite the report of Consumer Product Safety Commission:
— Citation Start —
Of the estimated annual average of 43,400 emergency department-treated injuries (2008–2010) and the 293 reported fatalities occurring between 2000 and 2010, staff noted the following:
Victims:
Estimated emergency department-treated injuries:
- 25,300 (58%) involved children, under age 18 years;
- 15,100 (35%) involved adults, ages 18 through 59 years; and
- 3,000 (7%) involved seniors, ages 60 years and older.
Reported fatalities:
- 245 (84%) involved children, victim ages 1 month to 8 years;
- 13 (4%) involved adults, victim ages 31 years to 59 years; and
- 35 (12%) involved seniors, victim ages 61 years to 96 years.
What fell?
Estimated emergency department-treated injuries:
- 19,200 (44%) involved televisions (or TV + furniture) falling;
- 22,500 (52%) involved only furniture falling; and
- 1,700 (4%) involved appliances falling.
Reported fatalities:
- 176 (60%) involved televisions falling (36% only TV, 24% TV + furniture); Largest category after TV only was TV + chest, bureau, or dresser.
- 92 (31%) involved only furniture falling; Largest category was chest, bureau, or dresser.
- 25 (9%) involved appliances falling.
— Citation End —
And suddenly the whole terrorists vs. furniture story takes a full 180 turn into bullshit town. Excuse my french.
Point 1: Mostly kids. Very sadly, 84% of kids are the victims of furniture or TVs falling. This leaves only 16% of 293 or 47 adults (zero fatalities between 8 and 30?!). So if you as an adult are reading this you should not be as worried.
Point 2: The timeframe: The author doesn’t even look at the same timeframe. 2000-2010! This includes 9/11. Yes, thankfully it was an outlier compared to the following decade, but it still counts into the statistic if you were to compare numbers.
Point 3: The numbers. In the furniture/TV column, we are talking about roughly 300 fatalities in a timeframe of 10 years for the whole USA. I really hope that at this point no one argues with me when I say that the fatalities of 9/11 are roughly more than 10 times more.
Point 4: What it means? Nothing. Let’s look at both statistics year by year. Fatalities caused by falling furniture/TVs on the left side and fatalities caused by terrorists in the US on the right side. You would probably see that the numbers on the left side are much more stable than the numbers of the right side, with 9/11 being a huge outlier. That is because we don’t have regular terrorist attacks. While each death on the left side is attributed to an individual event, the deaths on the right side are attributed to only very few events. Thus making it impossible to statistically calculate which column has significantly more deaths per year. This is basic statistics (I am not bringing in a reference here, please read a textbook on statistics if you don’t trust me) Ergo the whole comparison is absolute BS.
Point 5: The scale. If the US had a population 300,000,000 (wah! wild estimate!), 30 deaths per year are very sad in each individual case but on the big scale of things, this amounts to 0.00001% of the population. I think it would be much easier for the reader to understand the scale of things if such percentages were also mentioned. We are living in a very big country and often publications treat it as if it was the size of Iceland (Iceland you rock).
Last Point: The truth has always been relative. That’s why I think I should end with a ‘true’ fact: 99% of facts on the internet are false.