In reading the Wired article about the online news readers study and the web site of the study itself, I was annoyed by the generalizations the article makes. This reporting “style” is typical of the news media and makes me always question headlines and distilled reports of scientific studies. The Wired article repeatedly says things like “22 percent of online readers look at graphics” and “online readers read, on average, 75 percent of each article they click on.” It sounds so legitimate. But when you look at the details of the study, you find that they studied only 67 people. Here are their demographics. The FAQ states that this was a study of a certain subset of people, and “this study is not statistically valid as would be a survey”. The results need to be interpreted with their known conditions. But the media tends to forget little details like this, opting instead for juicy general statistics. They don’t seem to enjoy qualifying their facts. It’s unfortunate that we can not depend on the media to accurately present information to their readers. Besides cutting down on hype, it would save me all the time I spend tracking down the reality myself!