Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

15/05/2011

Investigating the numbers in the news. Including the public sector pay premium, statins and the disturbing finding that many scientific results appear to fade over time.

In More or Less this week:

Are public sector workers paid 43 per cent more than those in the private sector, as the think tank Policy Exchange claimed this week?

If all over 55-year-olds were given cholesterol and blood pressure-lowering drugs - as researchers recently suggested - how many people would take those drugs unnecessarily?

Jonah Lehrer on the "decline effect", the disturbing finding that many scientific results appear to fade over time.

Kelly Greenhill from Tufts and Harvard universities tries to calculate the civilian death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

Is modern science too complicated to be left to the scientists? Darrel Ince on a scandal in academia.

And we try to patch things up with poor old Fireman Dibble.

Producer: Richard Knight.

30 minutes

Just how reliable is our intuition? Find out with The Open University

OU Connect: Put your brain to the test with our new mind-bending probability problems!

When can you trust statistics?

When can you trust statistics?

大象传媒 Ideas discovers three easy ways to help make sense of statistics.

Download this programme

Download this programme

Subscribe to the More or Less Podcast or download individual episodes.