"Last year, 350 bajillion Americans stabbed themselves in the face with a fork"
Yes, that's tragic. But the additional thing that annoys me is that nowhere in the article does it say how many people are using forks when they don't stab themselves in the face or at all, how often did people do it last year or in the world, or what the data source is, or if this was a meal accident vs kitchen clean up accidents, or what about people stabbing others like that, or if this is counting repeat offenders or stabby motions or what.
But the biggest annoyance of all is the bigness of the number. How big is that number really? Why that number (which usually sounds like it is quite a bit more than the number of forks or people with the capacity to do such a thing). It's like magical thinking, saying a big exact number invokes some mystical 'wow'. It's a very specific thing for a very fuzzy idea. Self stabbing bad. A lot bad. Wow, lots of bad things is bad. Wow.
Oh, so you want me to be specific? OK, specifically any article anywhere that mentions a number. Mostly science popularization articles.
Sure, the main problem is the base rate fallacy, but it's so much further down the scale than that. It's the 'Wow, a number' fallacy.
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