It always bothers me when I see statistics in the news that don't point to their sources. Especially since the most outrageous ones (such as the one quoted in the article) are the ones that tend to get blown up and carried by other news outlets. This has a tendency to promote the poorly researched stories (since they are the ones more likely to come up with preposterous claims based on bad statistics) and noone seems to care much that the underlying assumptions are shaky at best. I see countless examples of this every week.

Some major news outlets should start doing a bit more research on their stories, and maybe hire a statistician.

Sounds like an opportunity for http://dbpedia.org

Is there anyone reading this who has not read The Huff? You should!

And do not miss the link at the bottom of the parent article. Darrell Huff sounds like a fun guy. I may have to dig out his other books.