A friend of mine recently posted (with suitably snide remarks) an article about how to "get more gasoline for your dollar" at the pump, by taking certain steps to improve the efficiency of your vehicle. (There are, of course, ways to get more gasoline for your dollar at the pump, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal.)
This sort of thing is nothing new, especially when journalists are trying to show the practical relevance of a scientific study; we are often told, for instance, that "Too Much Red Meat Can Increase the Mortality Rate" or some such nonsense.
But it's not fair to pin this on harried journalists and headline-writers, with blithe assumptions that their math and science training may not have been particularly recent or rigorous.
To the contrary, the brilliant and talented Dr. X recently advised that "if left in place, this ancyfay Atinlay aymnay is 100% guaranteed to become malignant" -- and that cannot be literally true. The statement needs a footnote such as "Should you be fortunate enough to live that long" or "As long as you don't die first from other causes." (If I had decided to forego the surgery and then got run over by a truck, those poor maligned cells would have remained benign my entire life.)
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