Misrepresentations

News headline claiming mining will not impact Archey’s frog

This is when someone twists, alters or presents a false or misleading version of another’s argument, position or evidence to distort understanding of the issue.

How to spot a misrepresentation

Look for differences between what is being said (or criticised) and the original position or evidence.
Identify the issue and then check if the counter argument has been oversimplified.
Is there any misquoting or selective use of evidence?
Has any of the detail been lost – for example, have certain quantifying words like “in some cases” or “possible” been removed?
Has the argument been reframed so it could mislead an audience?

For example, the image refers to a headline about an industry report that refutes the number of Archey’s frog in the Coromandel. The Department of Conservation administers the Native Frog Recovery Plan. It estimates a population of 5,000 to 20,000. The report’s author used modelling ‘based on sparse data’ (his words) to predict population numbers of more than 50 million in a pilot study. Read more about the data and how it was presented in this Stuff article.