Tag Archives: single women over 40

Ignore what you read

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A few days ago I blogged about Newsweek‘s lame-acre retraction of a story they published 20 years ago. The story claimed unmarried women over 40 were more likely to die by a terrorist attack than find a husband. The claim was bogus; Newsweek‘s attitude contemptible.

Now comes this article by Philip E. Tetlock at Project Syndicate,  “How Accurate Are Your Pet Pundits?”

Tetlock has written a book (Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?) that looks at pundit predictions, reported in the media, and whether they’ve come to pass.

This guy deserves a medal for calling attention to this. A big flashy platinum medal with a huge cash prize attached:

[W]hen hordes of pundits are jostling for the limelight, many are tempted to claim that they know more than they do. Boom and doom pundits are the most reliable over-claimers.

Between 1985 and 2005, boomsters made 10-year forecasts that exaggerated the chances of big positive changes in both financial markets (e.g., a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 36,000) and world politics (e.g., tranquility in the Middle East and dynamic growth in sub-Saharan Africa). They assigned probabilities of 65% to rosy scenarios that materialized only 15% of the time.

In the same period, doomsters performed even more poorly, exaggerating the chances of negative changes in all the same places where boomsters accentuated the positive, plus several more (I still await the impending disintegration of Canada, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Belgium, and Sudan). They assigned probabilities of 70% to bleak scenarios that materialized only 12% of the time.

Tetlock calls for tracking pundits’ records publicly, so that media consumers have a way of judging their credibility.

I say, we should also hold the media to account. After all, if false pundits weren’t hugged and kissed and led out into the spotlight, “here’s your microphone, dear,” their silly pronouncements could do no harm . . .

Why you’re better off being skeptical

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About what you “read in the papers,” that is. You know that Newsweek story from 1986 that said single women over 40 were more likely to be killed by terrorists than find husbands?

It was bunk.

Here, via CJR Daily, is a quick recap of the original piece.

Newsweek’s cover was premised on a single demographic study on marriage patterns in America which included these “dire statistics”: “white, college-educated women born in the mid-’50s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent. Forty-year-olds are more likely to be killed by a terrorist: they have a minuscule 2.6 percent probability of tying the knot” — figures which, Newsweek noted, were creating a “profound crisis of confidence among America’s growing ranks of single women.”

Here’s Newsweek’s mealy-mouthed retraction, 20 years later.

You know what? The 1986 Newsweek article includes all the elements that ought to make one instantly suspicious about a so-called news story– and no, I’m not even talking about the “single demographic study” bit. That’s too easy.

I’m talking about the combination of a hysterical cadence of direly regressive statistics and the assertion that the aforementioned statistics are causing terrible emotional duress–i.e., that they’re already exacting a measurable toll on peoples’ day to day lives.

It’s contemporary journalism’s equivalent of frenzy-inducing demagoguery. It doesn’t have to make sense. All it has to do is tap into some primal fear–fear of being alone, in this case–and ladle on a bunch of numbers that make it look like the reader is doomed.

But it gets worse. Here’s CJR Daily again:

How did that “terrorist” line come to pass? The magazine explains that it was “first hastily written as a funny aside in an internal reporting memo” by a Newsweek correspondent, then “inserted … into the story” by an editor on the opposite coast. Although this editor and her colleagues “thought it was clear the comparison was hyperbole … Most readers missed the joke.”

Not only was this a piss poor piece of journalism–they were flip about it.

Flip. As they launched a meme that, although subsequently debunked, remains widely believed.

Moral of the story: if it reads like hype, it is hype. Ignore it, for the sake of your own mental health.

Update: Also ignore the pundits.