More on obesity

As a follow-up to the November 30th post from the WSJ, this story by Radley Balko at Tech Central Station details more of the harm that unquestioned statistics can cause:

"The CDC's announcement represents a tidy anecdote for what's wrong with the obesity debate. The problem, put simply, is that hysteria sells. It sells research to grant writers, it sells executive summaries to media outlets, and it sells newspapers to the public. Anyone taking a close look at the 400,000 number could see some obvious flaws in its computation. In the New York Times, for example, the University of Chicago's Dr. Eric Oliver pointed out that there are only 2 million deaths each year in the United States, total. Since obesity has little effect on the mortality rates of people over 65, and 70% of annual deaths are among people over 65, in order for the 400,000 figure to be correct virtually every single death among people under 65 would have to have been caused by obesity."

Later, there's this:

"The most troubling thing about the 400,000 fiasco is the way nutrition activists and politicians relied on the number to call for drastic new laws and regulations aimed at getting obesity under control, but which also represented potentially severe restrictions on the food industry, and serious trespasses on consumer choice, personal freedom, and personal responsibility -- and how the media let them get away with it without an ounce of skepticism."

We all need to have a healthy skepticism for all statistics thrown at us. If it sounds too good to be true - or in this case, too ominous - it probably is.