Misleading Statistics

In order to talk about libel, I decided to search through the pages of my hometown newspaper, the Macon Telegraph. While, I didn’t exactly find a libel issue to discus, I was able to find an article dealing with child abductions that could be very misleading. The article discusses a mock abduction training exercise being carried out by a group of Georgia law enforcement agencies. However, the first few graphs are used to give background information about child abductions. The lead, “On average, a child is reported missing every 40 seconds, according to the AmberWatch Foundation,” is a great way to spark reader interest, but I went to the AmberWatch Foundation’s Web site and that statistic is part of a counter on top of the homepage. The counter will specify the number of children reported missing since you have arrived to the site and it clearly states that the source of the statistics is a study conducted by the Office of Juvenile Justice. In my opinion, that statistic was incorrectly attributed. Aside from that fact, the article deals with a child abduction training exercise. Child abductions are very different from a child being reported missing. I ran away from home like six times as a kid. Just because a child is missing does not mean that he or she has been abducted. I also had a problem with a quote that the journalist used from a spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. “Statistics show 44 percent die within the first hour, 74 percent within the first three hours, 91 percent within 24 hours and 99 percent within the first week.” If I were going to use that quote I would ask the woman from where the numbers came. Personally, I don’t buy it. It isn’t clear if the quote is talking about the number of children abducted or merely reported missing. Certainly, 44 percent of children reported missing do not die within the first hour. The numbers must be dealing with child abductions, but even so, the figures are a stretch and I would certainly like to find the source. I found interesting article when searching for statistics dealing with missing children in Slate. The Slate article says that officials total the number of reported cases from different categories (family abduction, nonfamily abduction, runaways, throwaways (abandoned children) and, “When the categories get conflated, the statistics can become confusing.” In fact the article says that in 2007, according to one study, out of 800,000 cases only 115 were “stereotypical kidnappings .” I guess by now I am just harping on the ability to lie with statistics, but my point is that if I were the journalist I would have researched those figures more closely.