Let me start by saying that I fully believe that eating disorders are a serious issue to a certain percentage of the population.
I'm not going to have a go at eating disorders - I could as easily be talking about monkey abuse, pickpocketing pixies or singing stoats. The issue isn't eating disorders - its the numbers.
Now, disclaimer out the way, this afternoon at lunchtime I was watching the news at 1245ish - into the "human interest" section on a slow news day.
We had the (female, young, skinny, pretty and blonde) reporter Sensitively (and I really do mean that capital letter. She couldn't be more sensitive if she held up a sign, it was so choreographed) interviewed a pair of sisters (female, young, skinny, pretty and blonde) about their eating disorders.
Over the course of the interview a number emerged - 1 million Britons suffered from eating disorders, or so some organisation claimed.
That seemed like a reasonable number, right? It must be a major issue to be on the BBC....right?
Well, let's play with this a little. 1 million out of 60 million people is about 1.7% of the population - thats about one person in fifty. Which is believable, isn't it?
But its not spread evenly though out the population. Assuming that 90% of eating disorder sufferers are female (which is a fair assumption....for example see here) then 900,000 sufferers are female, so that becomes 0.9/30 = 3% of the female population, or about one in thirty three.
Now, assuming that 90% of sufferers are under thirty - a very good assumption for anorexia, not such a good one over all - but running with 90% of cases, thats...um... 810,000. Or about 8% of the female population 30 or under, data from here.
Now, here's the thing. That's about one in thirteen. Now, I know a number of women under the age of thirty. I'd go as far as saying I know quite a few. Possibly as many has 50, now that I start putting names to people.
In that number I should have atleast 3, perhaps 4 people with eating disorders.
I can think of (maybe) one.
So here we have some group of people declared to have some issue that's Serious, and Must Be Addressed.
We narrow it down to the "at risk" group - yes, I freely admit using a back of envelope technique with some Rather Big Holes.
With that number we relate it to our experiences and find...well, a bit of a flaw.
Either the number is a complete lie (unlikely) or it's been spun significantly. It might refer to probable incidence though out the population based on current trends. (Which population trends...? Based on what fashion trends..? "Curvy" has been "in" before...)
Perhaps it also includes people who arn't serious enough to need treatment. (So where do you draw the line between not eating chocolate often because it's fattening, against a real medical condition? Because by that definition, I suffer from one!)
Perhaps...perhaps...I could go on.
My point? Here we have a statistic, presented as the Gospel Truth to the public. It's presented in a misleading manner with a distinct purpose in mind - to change public perception.
If you can't take a statistic, poke it and prod it a little and it still makes sense....then it's either wrong, misleading or really complicated - and shouldn't have been released to the media.
But when has real honesty ever mattered to a pressure group?
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2 comments:
Maybe they meant have or had had a eating disorder in their lifetime.
And also you cant know if someone has an eating disorders, people are very very good at hiding this, bulimia is alot of eating and purging, the women is eating in front of you wont wont say "will you excuse me, ive got to go and throw up now"
Now anorexia you can tell and maybe thats what you mean , the typical skinny and bony girl like in that interview, but remember there are other eating disorders.
I did say there were a number of holes in my arithmatic.
My point was that with a little crunching, the numbers didn't appear to make sense in the context they were presented in - another misleading statistic that won't be questioned.
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