Michael Fumento

AP's Borenstein Uses Tortured 'Analysis' to Estimate 'Likely' Deaths From VW's Emissions Cheat
By Tom Blumer | October 6, 2015 | 10:37 AM EDT

A story by Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press ("AP ANALYSIS: VW EVASION LIKELY LED TO DOZENS OF DEATHS"), originally published on Saturday but currently carrying a Monday morning time stamp, claimed that "Volkswagen's pollution-control chicanery" has been responsible for "killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years." Those results, based on an AP "statistical and computer analysis," "cleverly" recast the effort's raw results of "somewhere between 16 and 94 deaths over seven years."

Given how poorly supposedly sacrosanct computer models have done in predicting "global warming" trends, and how gullible journalists, especially Borenstein, have been all these years about them, it seemed quite wise to treat his VW "analysis" with caution. In an op-ed at Investor's Business Daily yesterday, Michael Fumento demonstrated that such skepticism was warranted.

'Sudden Acceleration' Evidence Against Toyota Weakens Under Examination
By Tom Blumer | March 13, 2010 | 11:59 PM EST
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Two reports linked by Instapundit earlier today demonstrate at a macro and micro level how weak the claim that Toyota has deliberately jeopardized consumer safety in connection with "sudden acceleration" complaints may ultimately turn out to be.

The macro piece comes from Megan McArdle (pictured at left; "How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars?") at her blog at the Atlantic. The magazine's business and economics editor dissected case-by-case detail originally compiled by the Los Angeles Times, which was also analyzed to an extent by Washington Examiner op-ed writer and Overlawyered blogger Ted Frank, to make important points about the likelihood of driver error in many of them.

The micro item comes from Michael Fumento, whose Forbes column takes apart the recent James Sikes "sudden acceleration" incident in California as it rips the establishment media for its total lack of skepticism about the driver's claims and his credibility.

First, to McArdle, who also has nicely done graphs at her post:

CBS Veteran Suicide Numbers Bogus?
By Warner Todd Huston | November 27, 2007 | 7:44 AM EST

On the CBS "Early Show" on Nov. 13th, co-host Julie Chen claimed that there was "an alarming suicide rate among veterans" of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. CBS then aired a report that went on to claim that the suicide rate for our troops had wildly climbed.