Unwed teenagers and other statistics in the news 

 Gary Langer, the director of polling for ABC News, has posted an  interesting piece  on some recent coverage (or mis-coverage) of social science and medical research.  One of his targets is an article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times announcing that " 51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse ."  I had heard a lot about this particular story, not least because one of my colleagues has it posted on the bulletin board in our office.  As it turns out, the magic 51% number was obtained by including women aged 15-17 in the data, something that was not particularly transparent in the article.  So, while there is nothing necessarily wrong with the data itself, it is not clear that these are the numbers that you should be looking at (unless you are concerned about the national epidemic of unwed teenagers living with their parents).   

 In addition to leading the polling unit, Langer serves as kind of a "statistical watchdog" for ABC News.  He was on a panel here at IQSS about a year ago and told some great stories about the amount of garbage that crosses their desks on a regular basis.  It would be nice if all of the major news organizations had similar arrangements in place to vet their coverage of statistical reportage. (Hat tip:  Mystery Pollster )