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Zenz`s statistical sleight of hand

abovetheclouds

This is an article reproduced from a thread by @abovetheclouds, thoroughly exposing Zenz and his statistical sleight of hand

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  4. Atlantic | China’s Xinjiang Policy: Less About Births, More About Control
  5. IUD story CNN
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  7. Archive | heqishi, 2019
  8. Jamestown | Zenz publication | Sterilisations ...

It`s absolutely mindblowing that the claim by Adrian Zenz that "80% of new IUDs in China were fitted in XJ" is still repeated by the media. It`s been long debunked as a purposely misleading statistical sleight of hand. Time for a recap.

Adrian Zenz published his non-peer-reviewed report [1] for the neo-con Jamestown Foundation in June 2020 (1st version). His initial claim was: "In 2018, [the] share [of newly placed IUDs in China that were fitted in Xinjiang] rose to 80 percent"

This was, of course, uncritically repeated by various western mainstream media reports [2-5], with none of them explaining the definition of this quantity.

[2]https://abcn.ws/2BQmSi2
[3]https://reuters.com/article/uk-usa-china-xinjiang-idUKKBN24030P
[4]https://theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/07/china-xinjiang-one-child-birth-control/614014/
[5]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/30/asia/xinjiang-sterilization-women-human-rights-intl-hnk/index.html

In contrast, Chinese media [6] did right away refute Zenz` claim by checking his source, the Annual Health and Hygiene Statistical Yearbook of China 2019 [7], and by calculating the correct share, which is 8.7%, not 80%.

Zenz then did update his report [8], changing every occurrence of "newly placed IUDs" to "net added IUDs". I`m not aware of any public announcement of this update, which isn`t conforming to the standard of an academic erratum listing the changes

Summary

- Zenz`s sleight of hand calculating 80% figure
- Zenz receives global attention
- push back demonstrates Zenz error
- Zenz doubles down on figure and changes report

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