Was there really a 5% measles vaccination rate in Birmingham? Has Brexit already cost 6% of the UKs economy? For how long has crime been falling? And are contestants on the reality gameshow any good at finding traitors?Tim Harford investigates

Are women in the UK the biggest binge drinkers in the world?

Nov 18th, 2023 11m 16s

We check out suspect stats on boozing Brits and fishy figures on fishing fleets in the South China Sea.With the help of Professor John Holmes from the University of Sheffield's School of Medicine and Population Health and Simon Funge-Smith, a s

Why is life expectancy falling in the USA?

May 6th, 2023 11m 45s

The average life expectancy of Americans is shrinking at an alarming rate. Between 2019 and 2021, a staggering 2.7 years has been shaved off, leaving the revised figure at 76.1 years - the lowest it’s been in more than two decades. It also sees

Qatar World Cup: the pressure of penalties

Dec 17th, 2022 11m 15s

The World Cup in Qatar is drawing to a close. Penalties and penalty shootouts have provided some of the biggest moments of the tournament. We analyse penalty data from the World Cup and ask what boosts the chance of scoring from the spot, with

The World Cup: how many migrant workers have died?

Dec 3rd, 2022 10m 6s

Qatar has been fiercely criticised over its treatment of migrant workers, many of whom have been employed to build stadiums and other infrastructure in preparation for the 2022 World Cup. We look at the wildly varying estimates of the number of

How bad is fashion for the environment?

Sep 17th, 2022 8m 58s

Is fashion really the second most polluting industry after oil and does it account for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions? Sustainable fashion journalist Alden Wicker does some fashion fact checking with Adam Fleming, presenter of BBC podcast and

The prime minister in statistical bother

Feb 9th, 2022 28m 52s

Boris Johnson has been ticked off for misleading Parliament on jobs and on crime. He claimed that the number of people in employment has been rising - when it’s been falling. And he made a claim that crime has fallen - when it’s risen. We discu

QAnon: Did 365,348 children go missing in the US in 2020?

Jan 16th, 2022 8m 58s

In December, Republican politician Lauren Boebert tweeted the claim that ‘365,348 children went missing in 2020’. This is a shocking statistic but is it true and does it mean what we think it means? We speak to Gabriel Gatehouse, international

Simpson’s Paradox: How to make vaccinated death figures misleading

1 Nov 28th, 2021 8m 58s

Vaccines are the best way to stop deaths and serious cases related to covid19, this is an irrefutable fact. However, recent ONS data seems to show that vaccinated people had a higher all cause death rate than unvaccinated people. Why is this da

Death, Tax and Dishwashers

1 Sep 15th, 2021 27m 41s

New data appears to show that double vaxxed people between 40 and 79 are getting Covid at higher rates than people who are unvaccinated, but that's not the case. It's all down to how Public Health England estimates the size of different populat

Asymptomatic Covid19 Cases

Oct 31st, 2020 8m 58s

A headline in a British tabloid newspaper claimed that ‘Staggering 86% who tested Covid positive in lockdown had NONE of the official symptoms’ but what does this mean and is it true?

US election: facts or fiction

Oct 24th, 2020 8m 58s

Tim Harford hears about the sheer volume of false claims made during the campaign. President Trump is well known for making wild statements, but has his behaviour changed? And what about Joe Biden? So much attention is concentrated on Trump’s c

Vitamin D, explaining R and the 2 metre rule

May 13th, 2020 27m 38s

R is one of the most important numbers of the pandemic. But what is it? And how is it estimated? We return to the topic of testing and ask again whether the governments numbers add up. As the government encourages those who can’t work at home t

WS More or Less: Coronavirus

1 Feb 1st, 2020 8m 58s

The WHO have declared a ‘Global Health Emergency’ as health officials are urgently trying to contain the spread of a new coronavirus in China and beyond; but not all the information you read is correct. We fact-check a particularly hyperbolic c

Coronavirus, emotions and guns.

Jan 31st, 2020 28m 30s

Fact checking claims about coronavirus and whether more guns equal fewer homicides.

WS More or Less: Amazon forest fires

1 Sep 2nd, 2019 8m 58s

Are they really 85 percent worse than last year?

Noisy Decisions

May 28th, 2022 8m 58s

Nobel memorial prize winner Daniel Kahneman is one of the world’s most famous psychologists, known particularly for his work identifying the role of cognitive bias in everyday decision making. In this edition of More or Less he talks to Tim Har

Are women 32% more likely to die after operation by a male surgeon?

Jan 19th, 2022 28m 34s

Are women 32% more likely to die after operation by a male surgeon? Headlines asserting this were shared across social media recently - but the truth is a bit more complicated.We compare the price and the quality of the UK’s Test and Trace syst

Does catching covid give you more immunity than being vaccinated?

Dec 12th, 2021 8m 58s

Immunity to Covid-19. We've all been hoping to develop it ever since the virus emerged two years ago. Since then, a race to vaccinate the world has begun in earnest, with many countries rolling out booster shots in response to the rise of the O

How many swimming pools full of vaccine do we need?

Apr 17th, 2021 8m 58s

If we brought together all the Covid 19 vaccine needed for the whole world, how much space would it fill up? An Olympic size swimming pool? We do some back of the envelope sums. Plus - we look at the increased risk of clots from pregnancy. Last

Why are US Covid cases falling?

Feb 27th, 2021 8m 58s

Cases of Covid 19 began to soar in the US in the autumn. By early January there were around 300,000 new cases a day. But since then the numbers have fallen steeply. What caused this dramatic drop? From herd immunity to the weather, Tim Harford

WS More or Less: Dozy Science

Jan 25th, 2020 9m 9s

Anxiety around sleep is widespread. Many of us feel we don’t get enough. An army of experts has sprung up to help, and this week we test some of the claims from one of the most prominent among them: Professor Matthew Walker. He plays ball and a

Has Milei fixed Argentina’s inflation problem?

21 hours ago 8m 58s

Libertarian popularist Javier Milei won the presidential election in Argentina on a promise austerity and economic “shock” measures for the ailing economy. Just a few months in, some are hailing the falling rate of inflation as showing those m

98%: Is misinformation being spread about a review of trans youth medicine?

7 days ago 14m 13s

The Cass Review is an independent report on the state of gender identity services for under-18s in England’s NHS.It found children had been let down by a lack of research and "remarkably weak" evidence on medical interventions in gender care.B

Tackling The Three-Body Problem

14 days ago 10m 58s

Netflix has a big new show named after and inspired by a classic problem in astrophysics, 'The Three Body Problem', where predicting the course and orbits of three or more celestial bodies proves near impossible.But how faithful is the Netflix