Zombie statistics
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How bogus stats can get repeated again and again until they end up influencing policy at governments and major multilateral institutions.
Ed Butler speaks to three people who claim they are struggling to slay these zombies. Ivan Macquisten is an adviser to the UK's Antiquities Dealers Association who actually wrote into Business Daily to complain about a previous programme that he claimed repeated false figures about the scale of looted archaeology from the Middle East finding its way into Western art markets.
Meanwhile, Kathryn Moeller of Stanford University describes how she never found the source of a claim widely quoted by international development agencies that girls are much more likely than boys to invest their income to the benefit of their household. And Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains the headache the UN faces in compiling international data about violent crime.
Also in the programme, Lazare Eloundou- Assomo of Unesco and the BBC's own Tim Harford.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Photo: Zombie cosplayer; Credit: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Linda and I'm Mercy. |
| 0:01.6 | What these weird girls? |
| 0:02.8 | They don't even sound right. |
| 0:03.9 | Before you get to the podcast you've actually chosen to download, |
| 0:06.7 | we're here to tell you about our new podcast, |
| 0:09.1 | Parent Land. |
| 0:10.3 | It's a podcast for anyone interested in raising children. |
| 0:13.1 | The idea is that listeners email in their questions |
| 0:15.1 | and we use scientific evidence and culture to try and find some answers. |
| 0:18.7 | Parent Land to the rescue. We've been having a good old chat about what we're hoping to get from parent land. |
| 0:23.4 | So if you want to hear what we've been talking about, please search for parent land wherever you find your podcasts. |
| 0:30.6 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, lies, damn lies and statistics. Some of the really memorable ones. Like |
| 0:39.7 | did you know, cultural artefacts are the world's third most traffic commodity, after drugs and guns. |
| 0:45.7 | That's quoted on the art crime homepage of the Interpol website. About six inches below that, |
| 0:50.5 | it says we have never had any figures and we have no idea. Yes, zombie stats are our theme today, the seductive but often slightly dodgy numbers that even |
| 0:59.5 | the UN can fall prey to. |
| 1:01.6 | It's just human nature to scrutinise very carefully something that surprises you and disconcerts |
| 1:06.8 | you and to be much less careful at scrutinising a claim that fits nicely in your worldview already. |
| 1:12.8 | That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:18.0 | Last September, we broadcast a program here on Business Daily all about the looting of antiquities. |
| 1:24.4 | Perhaps you heard it. |
| 1:25.4 | We're looking at a tray full of broken pottery, the detritus of the past. |
... |
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