Hamish Birchall Bulletin
Thursday 3rd December 2009 - 'Don't strike up the band'
'Visit a pub and there's every chance you'll hear background Muzak, or high-volume Sky Sports coverage of Premiership football. But what are the chances of hearing live music?' asks Nigel Hawkes, director of the prestigious campaign group Straight Statistics. Hawkes considers the validity of DCMS claims about live music based on
their licensing statistics: Straight Statistics is, in its own words, '... a campaign established
by journalists and statisticians to improve the understanding and use
of statistics by government, politicians, companies, advertisers and the
mass media. By exposing bad practice and rewarding good, we aim to restore
public confidence in statistics.' Nigel Hawkes is a former Health Editor of The Times, and has written
for The Independent and other broadsheets. Straight Statistics has a board
of directors, including among them Dr Ben Goldacre, Guardian columnist
and author of Bad Science, and Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor
of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge: ENDS Hamish Birchall |
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