Category Archives: De-Hyping

Climate Change: A Consensus Among Scientists?

Off the back of the recent Climate Skeptics vs The Consensus image, we were curious how many scientists might make up ‘The Consensus’.

The Skeptical side claims at least 31,486 dissenters in their ranks, according to the PetitionProject.org. That sounds like a lot. But is it?

Climate Change: A Consensus Among Scientists?
Of course, not all 12 million US scientists therefore agree with ‘The Consensus’. But this puts the PetitionProject’s 31,486 signatories in some kind of context.

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Also posted in Climate, Data Visualisation, Environment, Graph, Infographic, Skeptics vs Believers |
143 Comments

The Visual Miscellaneum: Errata

The Visual Miscellaneum

My beautiful book is out. Unfortunately a freak printing error has affected the text on 12 out of the 256 pages. I’m really sorry this has happened.

I’m pretty upset about it. I slaved for a year over every single page. So it’s a particular kind of pain to see mistakes creep in.

So I’ve put together an errata PDF of the affected pages. I’ve chucked in some new images in there as well.

Please email me if you want a copy of it.

UPDATE: Another mistake! Asking people to email me for a copy of the PDF. Doh. I’ve been deluged. Can I suggest this alternative method? Download this Visual Miscellaneum Errata PDF. It’s passworded. The password is the last word in the bottom right hand corner of page 159 of The Visual Miscellaneum. CASE SENSITIVE. Thank you. D

Also posted in The Visual Miscellaneum |
38 Comments

Is the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

Some frequent questions about the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine answered as clearly and as visually as I could manage. A few people asked for this so I thought I would oblige.

It was hell on earth to research. There’s a jungle of science around H1N1. Very hard to hack through. You can check all my sources here.

Is the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

You can check all my sources here.

UPDATE 1: Interesting story here on how the H1N1 vaccine is made

UPDATE 2: Jan 2010: There’s now a Greek version of the H1N1 Swine Flu image. (Thanks to George Papadakis) and a Hebrew version (thanks Matty)



Also posted in Disease, Health, Infographic, Statistics |
90 Comments

2012: The End Of The World?

2012: The End Of The World? by David McCandless, InformationIsBeautiful.net

A piece exploring the myths around 2012, Mayan Prophecy, geomagnetic reversal, The Long Count, consciousness shifts, Hunab Ku, galactica alignment, the Precession Of The Equinoxes, rogue planet Nibiru, solar storms, pole shifts, timewave zero, the return of Quetzalcoatl and THE END OF THE WORLD December 21st 2012!

Make up your own mind

UPDATE 1 (8 Dec 09): There’s now a Portuguese version of 2012 (thanks Ricardo Vieira) and a French version DEUUUUXMIIIILLEDOUUUUZE (thanks to Olivier!)



Also posted in Environment, Esoteria, Group MInd, Information Design, Media, Movies, Skeptics vs Believers, sci-fi |
109 Comments

Visualising the Guardian Datablog

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Drugs, Health, Visual Journalism |
84 Comments

How Safe is the HPV vaccine?

I’ve been reading a lot about the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine and the risk of serious side effects and even death. I thought I would seek out the numbers and put them in context. Especially given headlines claiming the HPV jab is “as deadly as the cancer” it seeks to prevent.

How Safe Is The HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Vaccine?

A note about the UK. These are the figures for Gardasil, the vaccine used in the US. In the UK, the dominant vaccine is Cervarix. For which I have no figures. Ben Goldacre explores some important points around Cervarix. Worth reading.

(You can explore my data here. I’ve put the data on three separate sheets inside the spreadsheet. Here are the original source documents from the US Centre Of Disease Control).

If you have any figures on Cervarix or any other facts and sources that can add to this diagram, please get in touch. Thanks!

If you’re looking for information on HPV, Cervical Cancer and immunisation, try these links
: The NHS page on the cervical cancer jab
: General info on immunisation, including HPV

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Also posted in Data Journalism, Disease, Health, Infographic |
117 Comments

More Truth About Twitter

If The Twitter Community Were 100 People II
Revisited If Twitter Was 100 People with some interesting new data

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Media, News, Simple, Statistics, Timelines, Web, twitter |
112 Comments

Patterns in the Group Mind

I’ve been playing with Google Insights. It’s a great toy. It measures ‘search intensity’. The number of searches being made for a certain term.

Off the back of the recent timeline of global media scare stories, I got curious about what searches actually look like.

For example, the search “violent video games” reveals a very distinct pattern.

Google Insights search:

Why that distinct pattern? If you add the dates, it clarifies things:

Google Insights search:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

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Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Fun, Graph, Group MInd, Media, Timelines, Visual Journalism |
34 Comments

If Twitter was 100 People…

If Twitter Was 100 People...

There’s quite a big discussion about this on Flickr.


:: source Sysomos [via Rohit Bhargava
:: download a hi-res PDF


Also posted in Data Visualisation, Simple, Social Networks |
74 Comments