Huntsville Times uses bogus statistic - again
Posted by BrianA little less than a year ago the Huntsville Times ran an op-ed that cited a popular statistic claiming that China graduates 600,000 engineers as opposed to the U.S. total of 70,000. The problem is that the numbers were shown to be bogus by a Duke University research team. They found that the U.S. graduates 137,437 engineers with four year degrees as opposed to China’s total of 351,537.
For some reason, though, the Times is still using the statistic. Here is the first question asked of Rex Geveden, a former deputy director of Marshall Space Flight Center:
Astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson noted in a recent speech in Huntsville that China graduates 10 times more students with math and science degrees each year than the U.S. does. How do we get more high school and college students interested in science and engineering?
The Times could claim their hands are clean by hiding behind the fact that they were paraphrasing deGrasse Tyson, but that argument would be quite weak. If deGrasse Tyson had asserted that the earth was flat surely the Times wouldn’t simply ask Geveden if one might inadvertently drive over the edge.
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February 4th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I cancelled half of my subscription to the Huntsville Times last big election cycle, to protest their bias. I was so mad at them for this weekend’s paper that I’m going to cancel the rest.
Between complaining that Rep. Schmitz was taken away in handcuffs, to the religion pages taking potshots at those who aren’t the ‘peace-and-Gaia-loving Christians’, to the Life section featuring rabid BDS female columnists, to the Leftist editorial pages featuring Prather and Persons, &c.; I am fed up with the pervasive liberalism and refuse to support that stuff with my money any more.
/rant off
February 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am
/rant on again
I attended the Mike Huckabee rally on Sat morn, and sat close to reporter McCarter. She might as well have stayed at home to write the story for Sunday’s paper - her story fit her narrative, but bore little resemblence to the event. She wrote it up as if Huck and the audience were involved in a preachy call and response. Hallelejah, Amen - she used those words to set the tone of her article, but no one in the audience said that - too busy clapping and cheering.