Thank you for downloading more or less from the BBC. This is the version of the

programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Halford.

Hello and welcome to more or less, the programme which applies the firm

smack of numerical correctness to the outstretched palm of

devious politicians and lazy journalists. Or is that lazy politicians and

devious journalists I can never remember? First, an apology to all the left-handed

listeners who were expecting to listen to our item last week.

We'll get to it this time. But if you believe all you're told,

the chances of you surviving to hear our conclusions are slim.

Right-handed people live on average nine years longer than left-handed people.

But first, the all-consuming subjects of the war in Syria,

and the prospect of Western intervention after a chemical weapons attack to the

east of Damascus. How many people were killed by this attack?

The US government says 1,429, including 426 children. France,

which has committed itself to joining the US in military action, says 281

people died. The British Foreign Office hasn't given an official

number at all, but the Joint Intelligence Committee says that at least

350 people were killed. And Moscow says it's ludicrous to say that the Syrian

regime used chemical weapons at all. All very puzzling.

I called up Kelly Greenhill, a professor of political science at Tufts University in the US,

and co-author of a book about the politics of crime and conflict statistics,

called sex, drugs, and body counts. I asked her why the numbers varied so wildly,

...