Fact or fiction? The week in numbers

A sceptical look at the headlines in a world of fake news and polarised politics

It is should be noted that pollution is not the cause of death recorded on 9 million death certificates — this is an estimate arrived at using lots of different sets of data.

The study’s lead author, professor Philip Landrigan, explained in an email:

With big health reviews like this with attention-grabbing number of deaths, it’s always worth noting how heavyweight the study is — it’s a huge report with hundreds of references published in a well respected journal.

The author also speculates that it’s possible that boys were less likely to go to a doctor, meaning the figure could be higher than reported among boys.

With stories like this that rely on self-reporting of medical issues, you need to keep in mind that people are not reliably honest about themselves, and ‘unreported’ figures on anything from crime rates to medical issues are, at best, estimates. The best you can hope for with ‘unreported’ figures is anonymous surveys with large samples.

It is worth noting that the sample size was small — only 19 people were given the treatment. There was also no control group — a separate group with similar symptoms who were not given the treatment.

The authors acknowledge this: “this study is limited by its small sample size and absence of a control condition.”

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