GO FIGURE demagoguery by the numbers

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/blog.htm
October 9, 2006

GO FIGURE
When it comes to child welfare, one of the ways advocates have
stampeded Americans into foregoing the normal checks and balances in
other fields is through the use of "advocacy numbers" - wildly
exaggerated statistics with little or no basis in fact.
A classic example took place at a 1981 Senate Hearing. John Walsh of
America's Most Wanted fame said "we were told not to come here
without some numbers." So he gave them some. He said that every year,
50,000 American children are kidnapped by strangers. The Senators
started repeating the number and it soon took on a life of its own.
Most estimates put the real figure at between 100 and 300. So Walsh was
off by only about 49,700 or so.
But Walsh's exaggeration pales compared to the M.S.W. who wrote a
guest column in a community weekly in the Cincinnati area last week.
Since she's not a celebrity like Walsh, I'm not going to use her
name. But I am going to quote her:
"Experts estimate that for every child reported as maltreated, as
many as 20 more go unreported."
According to the federal government, at least 3.5 million children were
"reported" to have been abused in 2004, the most recent year for
which data are available. More than two-thirds of the reports turned
out to be false, but the writer didn't say the reports had to be
true.
Multiply by 20 and you get 70 million children.
But in 2004, the total number of Americans under 18 was 73,277,998.
One can only wonder how those 3,277,998 escaped.