Summary
More or Less examines this week's claims and counter-claims about VAT, exposes some seriously sloppy reporting and - finally - reveals the truth about Jack the "psychic" monkey.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC |
| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Thank you for downloading this week's more or less podcast. |
| 0:39.2 | Here's Tim Harford. |
| 0:41.2 | Hello and welcome to more or less the show that does to dodgy statistics what |
| 0:46.1 | Alistair Cook does to the Australian paceman. This week we'll be covering the |
| 0:50.4 | archers, the dangerous concept of proofiness. We'll revisit the |
| 0:54.8 | Ash's predictions of Jack the Psychic Simeon and we'll pull apart the claims and |
| 0:59.3 | counterclaims about the rise in VAT. But first, let's turn to a story on contraception, which was so badly |
| 1:06.3 | reported on Channel 4 and elsewhere, it made us want to scream. |
| 1:11.1 | Channel 4 news has discovered more than a thousand complaints about |
| 1:15.2 | implanton have been received by the medicines watchdog at a time when the |
| 1:19.2 | device is being hailed as the future of family planning. Figures obtained by this program reveal that 584 women who had the hormone filled tube |
| 1:28.0 | inserted into their arms have reported unwanted pregnancies |
| 1:31.6 | to the medicines and health care regulatory authority. |
| 1:34.5 | Some women have been forced to have terminations and suffered the breakdown of their relationships. |
| 1:39.5 | Well there was an awful lot more like that. |
... |
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