"I am – I was – a geek. I played chess. I was the British girls under-14 champion."
So said Rachel Reeves in a Guardian interview. The Independent, Sky News, and Reuters ran similar headlines:
They claimed that her chess ability would lead to her becoming a successful chancellor. Reeves herself said "I've learned to think ahead, to plan a strategy." The BBC turned it into a broader political narrative about sexism and private schools: "Growing up, Reeves was driven around the country by her parents to compete and beat privately educated boys, often as the only state ...
3 Jan 2025 | A fact is not data,A statement is not fact,Confirmation bias,Data is not evidence,Evidence is not proof
Chris van Tulleken’s “Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … And Why Can’t We Stop?”, on the dangers of Ultra-Processed Food (UPF), was one of the most successful books of 2023. It was a #1 Sunday Times Bestseller and an Economist, Daily Mail, Good Housekeeping, and Amazon Book of the Year. Even now (January 2025) it’s still #9 in the Amazon charts, having spent 88 weeks in the top 20.
Due to its popularity, I’d heard about it before reading it, and the punchlines resonated strongly with me. I try to eat home-cooked meals wherever possible, consume very ...
25 Jul 2024 | A statement is not fact,Confirmation bias,Data is not evidence
In March 2022, my LinkedIn feed lit up with people sharing this article: It is by Reuters, a highly-respected news source, on a report by Arabesque, an asset manager and data provider I greatly admire and wrote about in Grow the Pie. It was taken at face value and shared uncritically by LinkedIn Top Voices, such as the post below with 415 Likes and 92 comments: One of these comments, by another LinkedIn Top Voice, claimed that "Diverse boards do better period" and that this evidence could be used against the "non converted". The "period" implies that the issue is open-and-shut, ...
