Just The Facts, Ma'am

Have you heard that more domestic violence occurs on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day? That statistic was reported years ago in an article on gender equality and has been incorporated into countless messages since. It sounds barbaric and likely compels the hearer to feel that something should be done. As it should. But there’s a problem. The problem is that since the article first appeared questions have surfaced about the research techniques used in the first place and the dissemination of the information after the fact. However, that disclaimer usually gets left out of any citation and the study keeps getting validated. Maybe rightfully so. It could be accurate, but we don’t know because the authorship of the study always seems hard to pin down. Another piece of information often (incorrectly) cited from the original article was that thirty million people, mostly women, die every year from eating disorders. Which, of course, made women’s groups go the proverbial ape you-know-what. Until someone took a second and realized that would mean the equivalent of the entire state of California would be dropping dead annually. That seemed unlikely. After a lot of digging and dead ends, it was discovered the original source claimed thirty million people are affected by eating disorders each year. That seemed more likely. But tracking down the truth was a big job. In Harriet Ziefert’s Who Said Moo?, Rooster has a heck of time getting to the bottom of things. Ain’t that the way of it?

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Said-Moo-Harriet-Ziefert/dp/1929766475

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000018411,00.html