Friday, June 17, 2011

Lies, Damned Lies and the Central Limit Theorem

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.


And in other news Pope Ratzinger confirms the catechism of the Catholic faith and a bear in the woods said "I say, do you mind, I'm having a crap".

That must have been the easiest piece of research in the universe. I hope to The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) that none of my taxes went to fund this shite.

Also we have this gem from the same "report"

In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.


Yes and I recall back in the 70's when the moral panic of the day was "video nasties" that some asshat came up with a survey that showed 50% of kids under 16 had seen a splattery gore movie. Well that was until another team did a similar survey and put in a whole bunch of fake but plausible titles like "I spit on your zombie apocalypse" and, surprise, a whole load of kids claimed to have seen those too.

"Yeah I'm 13 and I've been drunk loads and shagged seven girls" - no you haven't you're just bigging yourself up you nauseating adolescent, now get back to your WiiBox360 won't you.

Whilst the rest of the adult world prepares for yet more taxes on booze because we have to "protect the little kiddies"

1 comment:

Stephen said...

Every year the Joseph Rowntree Foundation pump out more propaganda in an effort to justify their charity. Thank goodness that people like you and I can see through their surveys. We understand how surveys work, how organisations run these surveys to promote themselves and how questions can be managed to achieve the desired results. We also understand children and peer group pressures, because we were young once!

What I really can't stand is those Customer Service Questionnaires - loved by ALL travel providers in their quest for league tables. We know how useless that data really is, as the sample is self-selecting, the questions loaded and the passenger is often ignorant of the infrastructure and the profit before service business culture.