Taking Risks and Reaping Rewards

Misleading Media

Critical thinking example:

The wire services have picked up a story that they called, "The Most Dangerous Sport: Cheerleading" Here's the link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090626/sc_livescience/themostdangeroussportcheerleading

This comes from the website Live Science and their article that can be found here: http://www.livescience.com/health/080811-cheerleading-injuries.html

Butif you dig a little deeper, go to the source, you find that theoriginal story a year earlier that was called, "Girls' Most DangerousSport: Cheerleading" Here's the link: http://www.livescience.com/health/080811-cheerleading-injuries.html

But this is all spin. If you go to the data in the actual journal article found here: http://www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/AllSport.pdf you find a totally different story.

Forgirls there have been a total of 112 direct and 56 indirectcatastrophic injuries to high school, female athletes from 1982-83 –2007-2008, which includes cheerleading. But for boys the numbers arefor the 26-year period 1982-1983 – 2007-2008, high school fall sportshad 656 direct catastrophic injuries and 635, or 96.8%, were related tofootball participants. A summary of high school winter sports,1982-1983 – 2007-2008, show a total of 123 direct catastrophic injuries(7 fatalities, 66 non-fatal, and 50 serious) and 156 indirect. From1983 through 2008, high school spring sports were associated with 126direct catastrophic injuries.

So when we add those up, we findthat Girls had 168 total, and Boys had 905. More telling is thatfootball alone had 635, almost 4 times the total of all girls sportscombined. So when they provide a headline of the most dangerous sport,the evidence clearly shows that they being misleading.

Here's myquestion: What do you think the percentage is of the people that readthat headline will be misled and think it applies to both boys andgirls?

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. - Will Rogers