Death by french fries
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The Daily Telegraph did not do much for its reputation, at least in my eyes, when it confused the defense with the prosecution after a celebrity sexual assault mistrial. Nor when it recently consulted me about whether there were grammar mistakes on a banknote, learned that there clearly were not, but went ahead and published the claim that there were anyway. Now for a sample of the Telegraph's science reporting, written by Adam Boult, who I suspect didn't complete his statistics course:
That's right: although your probability of dying is one hundred percent, just like mine, the Telegraph has found a study saying you can double it by eating french fries.
On the left you can see the Telegraph's picture of Britain's brave prime minister courting death by eating fries regardless (why antagonize the fast food industry when you lack a majority in parliament). I will not bother to go through the business of correcting the math and explaining what the study really said, because that has been nicely done in an article in The Spectator by Christopher Snowdon. Suffice it to say that just when I think I've seen the dumbest science story headline ever, along comes a dumber one.