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Ocean acidification is an inevitable consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's a matter of fact. We don't know exactly what will happen to complex marine ecosystems when faced with the additional stress of falling pH, but we do know those changes are happening and that they won't be good news.Freedom of speech, and of the press, is, of course, precious. Yet that freedom also brings responsibility. The Editors' Code of Practice - which IPSO says it upholds - requires the "highest professional standards". This includes taking care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text. In addition, a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.Is this just an honest opinion, a statement of fact or wilfully misleading and clever rhetoric? That depends on what is meant by "evidence". If it means quality research carried out by scientists with expertise in the field, the statement is factually incorrect. But if evidence includes anything said by non-experts, such as Delingpole, then that's an increase, right?

Christopher Pyne has overstated how well Australia is performing on jobs and growth compared to other major economies. IMF estimates for 2016 on GDP growth had put Australia ahead of the G7 countries. But the latest available data - which are actual figures as of the third quarter of 2016, not estimates - show that Australia's cumulative growth in 2016 so far is at the level of the G7 and not higher. So Australia is performing in line with the G7 and slightly worse than the OECD average.

How do we measure illegal activity? How do we estimate the size of the 'black economy'? Some nice visualisations in this report. The Australian government has announced a taskforce to "crack down on the black economy", with a panel reportedly to consider measures such as removing the $100 note from circulation and limiting cash transactions above a certain limit. One estimate of the underground economy from 1999, which only considered cash transactions and excluded illegal activities, put the size of the underground economy at around 15% of gross domestic product. However, a more recent estimate by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2013, which encompassed proceeds from illegal activities as well as other areas, estimated the size to be far smaller, at only 2.1% of GDP.

What does what people search for tell us about? Did you know Google publishes its most searched for queries? With 2017 just around the corner, Google is continuing its yearly tradition of its "year in search results," a run down of the most frequently Googled sensation throughout 2016.

The importance of understanding #fallacies for helping to understand why people deny scientific explanations.

"we pushed back against a misleading news release from Yale University that ran with the headline, "Yale researchers discover underlying cause of myeloma." The release claimed that the researchers identified "what causes a third of all myelomas," describing a faulty immune system response to compounds known as lysolipids as the culprit. But that characterization was wrong. First off, the research only demonstrated an association between lysolipids and this cancer - they didn't prove that one caused the other. And far from applying to a third of myeloma patients, the findings applied only to a tiny group of patients "

Last Week Tonight clip: John Oliver hosts a mathematically representative climate change debate, with the help of special guest Bill Nye the Science Guy, of course. Using performence & comedy to communicate a scientific point

Using comedy/performance to make a point about statistics regarding a social/health issue.

Using comedy/performance to make a point about statistics regarding a social/health issue.

This is a really great example of using a visualisation to communicate a quantitative fact check. This claim is a good case for doing a basic plausibility check, and thinking about what numeric information you'd need to know to understand the claim (e.g., how many people are deported now (what's the baseline), and what are the estimates for the maximum number of unauthorized immigrants in the country?).

So I set out to get to the bottom of the evidence on how we respond to rational arguments. Does rationality lose out every time to irrational motivations? Or is there any hope to those of us who want to persuade because we have good arguments, not because we are handsome, or popular, or offer heavy clipboards.

9 helpful tips to stop yourself from sharing false information.

Of the 6,916 news items examined in our research, more than 20% featured a statistic. Most of these statistical references were fairly vague, with little or limited context or explanation. Overall, only a third provided some context or made use of comparative data.

I set out to discover which Harry Potter actors have had the best careers since the franchise kicked off in 2001 - similar to the analysis I did of people who've acted in the Star Wars franchise. How many other movies did they make, how good were those movies and how much money did they bring in? To find out, I turned to IMDb. For every actor who was credited in one of the eight Harry Potter movies, I pulled every full-length feature film2 that he or she was credited in, as well as the ratings for each film and its box-office take, if IMDb had it.

A good example of poor reporting of a medical study, the Daily Mail claimed that "Diets laden with butter, cream and cheese 'can help combat surge in type 2 diabetes' - but the evidence does not support that argument - looking at the evidence, it's clear there is a small quantifiable difference between the two groups analysed, and that the study focuses on a short period of time.

"Significant Digits" is a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news by fivethirtyeight.com - e.g. in this issue 29 percent Percentage of Americans who regularly work weekends. Another 27 percent regularly work between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Maybe useful for understanding how important quantitative information is in the world around us.

'Significance' is a magazine published by the UK Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. E.g. this article discusses the data we might use to analyse food security, thinking about what sources of data are available and the questions they might help us answer. "data on food insecurity is biased towards the environment in which it was created and the priorities of those who collect or commission it. Data from schools is concerned with reimbursement; government data might be focused on budgetary constraints or accountability; grocery stores could (if willing) tell us what food is bought, but not how it is used; meanwhile, non-profits are most interested in demonstrating impact to funders. There is a wide variety of data sets available, but very few are created with the intent to understand the real drivers of hunger and poverty. The data may be repurposed, but modellers must be especially careful to moderate the assumptions of each data set. ...... It is also especially important that those experiencing hunger and poverty are consulted when designing any data analysis project. The input of domain experts is crucial to the success of data science endeavours, and those experiencing poverty know the right questions to ask."

Where else have you seen risk claims like "x causes 50% increase in health-problem y"? Do you tend to trust these claims? Do you understand what they mean? Would they change your behaviour? "Interpreting health (or any other) risk estimates reported in the media is not straightforward. Even health professionals can get tripped up trying to make sense of these statistics, so it is no wonder the public can easily be confused or misled. Often there is tendency to overreact to risk estimates, so it's worth unpacking what these really mean."

If you were surprised by the result of the Brexit vote in the UK or by the Trump victory in the US, you might live in an echo chamber - a self-reinforcing world of people who share the same opinions as you. Echo chambers are a problem, and not just because it means some people make incorrect predictions about political events. They threaten our democratic conversation, splitting up the common ground of assumption and fact that is needed for diverse people to talk to each other. A few tools are mentioned in the post that help you see "the other side" of a story - you might like to play with them, e.g. http://politecho.org "is a browser extension that shows the political biases of your friends and Facebook newsfeed"

Going beyond a surface level analysis of the statistics to delve deeper into the story A similar contrast can be seen in the census data on the religiosity of Australians. The census asks participants to state their religion. The answers reveal that while on the one hand Australians are becoming less religious, on the other they are becoming more religiously diverse. In the 2011 census, 68.3% of people identified themselves as having a religion. This was down from 69.5% in 2006. However, the census does not tell the whole story. It cannot tell us how often a person attends a church, mosque, synagogue or temple. It cannot tell us how often a person prays or performs some other religious ritual.