UTS-AEI

As the author of this FactCheck, I was asked to review the facts on Australia's foreign aid spending from the Menzies era to 2016-17. Sir Robert Menzies was prime minister from 1949 to 1966, which is the Menzies era for present purposes. (Menzies also served as prime minister from 1939 to 1941.) I examined the evidence for and against this statement: Aid was at its highest under Menzies, at 0.5% … when per capita income was much lower. - World Vision Australia Chief Advocate Tim Costello, quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald, December 28, 2016. I found the statement to be incorrect, strictly interpreted, though Costello's broader point is valid. The ratio of Australia's aid to its gross national income has never exceeded 0.48%, and that level was achieved slightly after the conclusion of the Menzies era, in the financial year 1967-68. Below, I explain how I arrived at this conclusion, providing more detail than could be accommodated in the FactCheck itself.

We all do it in journalism. We are taught to write a headline that a) captures what the story is about, and b) captures the reader's attention. Nothing wrong with that. Where the problem comes in is if the headline misleads or misinforms. And, as is so often the case with healthcare topics, that sort of disconnect has the potential to do more harm than good.

In 1967, following riots in Detroit, Philip Meyer used survey research methods, powered by a computer, to show that college-educated people were just as likely to have rioted as high school drop outs. His story was one of the first examples of computer assisted reporting and precision journalism, in which journalists use social science methodologies to extract and tell stories. In recognition of his contribution to the area, each year's best computer-driven and precision stories are celebrated through the Philip Meyer Journalism Award. The Award's 2016 winners have just been announced, with the successful entries showcasing techniques derived from quantitative and qualitative methods, such as surveys using randomly-selected respondents, descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, social network analysis, content analysis, field experiments, and more.

According to inoculation theory, facts are important but by themselves aren't sufficient to convince people as long as misinformation is also present. People also have to be inoculated against the misinformation, for example through an explanation of the logical fallacy underpinning the myth.

In this case, because pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, the impressive-sounding 50% reduction doesn't amount to very much. According to the American Cancer Society, a 60-year-old man has a 0.41% (1 in 241) chance of developing pancreatic cancer during the next ten years. (Risk varies greatly with age and is much lower at younger ages.) So cutting that risk in half might bring it down to about 0.2% (1 in 480). It's a 50% drop, sure, but the risk was already very small to begin with. In this case, it's more helpful to news and health care consumers to describe it as a 0.2 percentage point reduction. And then there are the harms of regular aspirin use; the Yale news release that the tweet links to doesn't mention any. But taking aspirin regularly isn't a harmless intervention - far from it. It's well known that taking aspirin every day can cause serious bleeding in the gastrointestinal system and, less frequently, in the brain. That's why guidelines for aspirin use in cardiovascular disease prevention don't recommend it for people at low risk of a heart attack. The potential benefits may be outweighed by the risks of a serious bleed.

The quest for balance in a health news story can fail before the first sentence if the headline isn't appropriately calibrated. With that in mind, I looked at news stories and releases that we reviewed over the past month and compared the headline message with that of the study on which the news is based. About a third of news story headlines and a quarter of news release headlines either misstated the results or went beyond what the research could support.

'Killer facts' are those punchy, memorable, headline-grabbing statistics that make reports special. They cut through the technicalities to fire people up about changing the world. They are picked up and repeated endlessly by the media and politicians. They are known as 'killer' facts because if they are really effective, they 'kill off' the opposition's arguments. The right killer fact can have more impact than the whole of a well-researched report.

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?

A headline in The New York Times today reads "In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda." Is it true? The story itself provides hints that the headline is misleading, and likely to damage the image of the SNAP program and its beneficiaries. This is dangerous, considering that many readers look at clickbaity headlines, like the NYTimes one, but don't read stories. SNAP households aren't different than the rest of households. Most Americans buy and drink way too much soda and, as a result, obesity and Type II diabetes have reached epidemic levels. The story says that households that receive food stamps spend 9.3% of their grocery budget on soft drinks, while families in general spend 7.1%. This is one of those cases when reporting just percentages, and not taking into account other variables, such as total spending in groceries, sounds fishy.

Nothing but the truth: Are we really living in a post-truth world? It has been an extraordinary year for the concept of veracity. Brexit. Trump. Experts have taken a beating, facts have apparently taken second place to emotion and feeling. And what about truth? It seems like fewer and fewer people, whether voters or politicians, care what's true anymore. Step forward the Oxford English Dictionary's word of 2016: "post-truth". Is this just shorthand to help liberals make sense of a world they don't like? Or does it mark something more meaningful? Are we really no longer interested in truth or is our toxic political climate clouding our ability to agree on what the facts are? In a series of special programmes as 2017 begins, Radio 4 examines inflection points in the world around us. In the first programme, Jo Fidgen explores how our brains process facts when they become polluted by politics. Producer: Gemma Newby

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. After all, who doesn't sometimes feel like the world we know is secretly being run by a race of human-reptile hybrids? Most of us don't take this kind of thing seriously.Most of us think we'd never fall for a conspiracy theory, but as it turns out, there just might be a little guy wearing a tinfoil hat inside all of us.

Climate deniers have been peddling the myth 'no warming since [insert date]' for over a decade. It's a popular myth among those who benefit from maintaining the status quo because if the problem doesn't exist, obviously there's no need for action to solve it. And it's an incredibly easy argument that can be made at any time, using the telltale technique of climate denial known as cherry picking.

How we track our economy influences everything from government spending and taxes to home lending and business investment. The Conversation series The Way We Measure takes a close look at economic indicators to better understand what's going on. Ever since 1944, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been a primary measure of economic growth. It's in the news regularly and, even though few can define what it means, there is general acceptance that when GDP is growing, things are good. There are problems with this simplistic formulation.

Many public conversations we have about science-related issues involve communicating risks: describing them, comparing them and trying to inspire action to avoid or mitigate them. Just think about the ongoing stream of news and commentary on health, alternative energy, food security and climate change. Good risk communication points out where we are doing hazardous things. It helps us better navigate crises. It also allows us to pre-empt and avoid danger and destruction. But poor risk communication does the opposite. It creates confusion, helplessness and, worst of all, pushes us to actively work against each other even when it's against our best interests to do so. So what's happening when risk communications go wrong?

Citizen-generated data is especially important for women's rights issues. In many countries the lack of women in positions of institutional power, combined with slow, bureaucratic systems and a lack of prioritisation of women's rights issues means data isn't gathered on relevant topics, let alone appropriately responded to by the state. Even when data is gathered by institutions, societal pressures may mean it remains inadequate. In the case of gender-based violence, for instance, women often suffer in silence, worrying nobody will believe them or that they will be blamed. Providing a way for women to contribute data anonymously or, if they so choose, with their own details, can be key to documenting violence and understanding the scale of a problem, and thus deciding upon appropriate responses.

One way of working out if the data you're gathering is particularly sensitive is to do a thought experiment: what would happen if this data got into the hands of a malicious actor? Who would be keen to get their hands on it? What are the worst things that they could do with this data? Sometimes, though, it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of your enemies, or to envision potential future actions. As a result, practising data minimisation is a keystone of a rights-based, responsible data approach. And sadly, it's the opposite of the approach we're seeing governments around the world take.

During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, both sides used statistics pretty freely to back their arguments. Understandably, UK broadcasters felt compelled to balance competing perspectives, giving audiences the opportunity to hear the relative merits of leaving or remaining in the EU. In doing so, however, the truth of these statistical claims was not always properly tested. This might help explain some of the public's misconceptions about EU membership. So, for example, although independent sources repeatedly challenged the Leave campaign's claim that the UK government spent £350m per week on EU membership, an IPSOS MORI survey found that almost half of respondents believed this was true just days before the election. 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. Statistics featured mostly in stories about business, the economy, politics and health. So, for example, three-quarters of all economics items featured at least one statistic, compared to almost half of news about business. But there were some areas - where statistics might play a useful role in communicating trends or levels of risk - that statistics were rarely used.

This is a great list of evidence based stories by FiveThirtyEight (FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis - hard numbers - to tell compelling stories about elections, politics, sports, science, economics) They also produced a list of some great stories from other venues: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/damn-we-wish-wed-written-these-11-stories/

Bald-faced lies are, thankfully, fairly rare in Australian politics. Being caught in an outright fib or blooper is still seen as shameful. The problem in Australia is that facts and statistics are frequently twisted to paint a misleading picture. Weasel-words, cherry-picking and overstatements are common. Our politicians and lobby groups are masterful at disguising opinion and ideology as fact, and making statements that, ultimately, aren't checkable. These tactics are harder to spot, but equally dangerous. FactCheck: Is 30% of Northern Territory farmland and 22% of Tasmanian farmland foreign-owned? Election FactCheck: are many refugees illiterate and innumerate? Election FactCheck Q&A: has the NBN been delayed? Election FactCheck Q&A: is it true Australia's unemployment payment level hasn't increased in over 20 years? And more...

To communicate uncertainty in climate change models and predictions, the IPCC uses a range of expressions to describe the probability that a particular event will occur. For example, in the phrase: "It is very likely that heat extremes will become more frequent in the future," the phrase 'very likely' is used to describe a likelihood of more than 90 per cent, says Smithson.