Post-truth data maps
The Herald has a story “New map compares breast sizes around the world”. They blame news.com.au as the immediate cause, but a very similar story at the Daily Mail actually links to where it got the map. You might wonder how the data were collected (you might wonder why, too). The journalist did get as far as that:
The breast map doesn’t reveal how the cup sizes were measured, it’s fair to say tracking bra purchases per country would be an ideal – and maybe a little weird – approach.
Wondering isn’t really enough. The original source for the map says absolutely nothing about where the data came from — for all we can tell, they might just have been made up.
This isn’t just cynicism. A couple of months ago there was a story in Britain’s Sun, under the regrettable headline “The breast in the world”, with quite a different map. That one appears to have been a complete hoax: there’s a good commentary at the Manila Times.
One thing we do know for sure: the Herald’s map is not new. It’s been up for at least five years, as you can find in a few seconds with Google, giving some sort of bound on the level of fact-checking involved.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »