Freakonomics picked up on the Ring finger study, you can find it here:
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/05/25/so-strange-i-actually-believe-it/

The ring finger study shows that even the most statistically minded can be tricked. Its not our fault, everyone expects the reporter to have gone and made clear the relevence of the statistics, and yet because they don’t, these small studies get blown out of proportion.

First off, it is alway sad when someone dies. That is very unfortunate, and maybe everyone needs a way to grieve. That being said, you shouldn’t be allowed to grieve by making frivolous law suits.

http://cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/story/10195640/rss

It would seem that the father is blaming everyone else for the death of his son. It was the restaurants fault that he was driving drunk. It was the stalled cars fault that it stalled on the road to be hit. It was the tow truckers fault that they did not move the car before Hancock ran into it.

Yet, the father doesn’t seem to place any blame on the son, who was driving drunk…while talking on the cell phone…without a seat belt…but with marijuana, for his own death.

The story is that a group of English scientists were able to find correlation between the length of index finger vs ring finger to the SAT Math score. They took the lengths for 75 6-7 year olds and later checked their SAT scores. From this, we have a number of articles including:

Longer ring finger points to high SAT math score
Finger length key to child’s success: study
Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance
Longer Ring Finger, Higher SAT Math Score
School success at your fingertips

Let’s take a quick look at some of the hard numbers they have provided.

Of these 5 articles, only 2 of them point to the 75 number. The rest just take the study as it is, feeling it is definitive.

Now, I am a highly mathematical mind and my ring finger is longer than my index by quite a bit, so I won’t say that this correlation may not be true. On the other hand, I don’t think its smart to judge the human race and their mathematical skills based on the standardized test results of 75 children.

The only major number they all point to is the measurements down to a 0.01mm. Two major problems here. First, is it even possible to judge the exact length of a finger down to 0.01? Where does the finger start? Is it possible to point to the start of the finger down to 0.01mm? It would seem to me, even if you can make measurements down to 0.01mm, its not significant as human error in measurement would at best get you .1mm accuracy (I would say .5mm accuracy is already very good). Second, is 0.01mm accuracy significant? If we are measuring a mile distance, is it important that we get it accurate down to 0.01mm? In the same vein, when we are talking about the difference between the fingers, does a single 0.01mm difference become significant? If it is, wouldn’t the first point make the whole test inaccurate?

Yet, with clear problems with the numbers, two of the articles correlate a childs success with their finger length in the title. Sensationalism?

The fundamental problem about news is that there are actually seperate goals for news between the consumer and the reporter.  A reporters goal is to sensationalize and make a good headline.  This is what interests people.  The consumer on the other hand, is expecting truth.  When a reporter decides that a story sounds the best by leaving out information, the person that loses out is the consumer.

So here, I am hoping to point out the bad articles and the good articles in our world.  Where reporters don’t just sensationalize the news, they dig deeper.  If they find a good nugget that is both sensational and true, than we’ll point it out.  If they sensationalize, we’ll deride.