Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast from the BBC.

You can find out more about our programme on our website,

bbc.co.uk slash radio4.

But before you do that, here's Tim Halford.

Hello and welcome to More or Less, your faithful guide to the numbers in the news

and in life, obviously two very different things.

This is the last programme in the series and we'll use it to ask this.

Is modern science too complex to be left to the scientists?

We'll answer this.

If everyone over 55 were given cholesterol and blood pressure lowering drugs,

as researchers recently suggested, how many people would take those drugs unnecessarily?

And we'll discuss this.

The effect sizes start out very big and very robust,

and they get smaller and smaller and smaller.

Until after a few years, there is no effect size left.

The thing itself seems to have disappeared.

But first, by popular demand,

let's look at this week's news that public sector workers

are paid 40 or even 43% more than those in the private sector.

Many listeners tweeted an email about that number,

which made headlines in several newspapers

and even led the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

...