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By chance I was listening to for the firsttime to the BBC Radio program “more or less” at 3:50 am in the morning. The program according to its website is “the essential guide to numbers, risk, league tables, targets,budgets, measurement and quantification of every kind in the news, our personallives and elsewhere.http://www.bbc.co.uk/search q=more%20or%20less” It makes clear the statistical detail background behind “news” so the listening public has a better  and correct understanding of the headlines.  A good example is the recent headline news about  “ . . processed meats of any kind cause cancer . . “ which of course  worries the general public a great deal. But if you listen to the  program explanation, then you can breathe a sigh of relief and make up your own mind about the risks.  For example, the headline trumpeted that eating processed meat  will increase the risk of colon cancer by 18% - an alarming figure. But the program explains that the risk of getting colon cancer for the general public is 15%. But for the person  who eats 50 gram of processed meat every day, the  risk increased  to 18%. Yes, this is an ~18% increase in risk but a small increase  in the context.

Worth taking a listen orlook at the website. In fact we should learn to  take most numerical headlines with “a grain of salt” and strive  to know the background details to properly evaluate the risks.