One in five Muslims do what? How to create your own dodgy data | Dean Burnett

The Sun's recent controversial front page is just the latest in a long line of worrying claims and reports based on stats, surveys and polls that turn out to be less reliable than you'd hope

Yesterday saw an angry backlash against The Sun's front page which stated that one in five Brit Muslims are sympathetic to Jihadis. A very worrying finding; there are about three million Muslims in the UK, and 600,000 of them support violent terrorists? A terrifying thought, in the wake of the recent Paris attacks.

Luckily, many people have taken The Sun to task and shown how the data they base this claim on actually says nothing of the sort. But The Sun shouldn't really be singled out for this behaviour: it happens all the time. Last week saw the Daily Mail front page saying 60% of Britons think we should bomb Syria, while Jeremy Hunt was criticised by statisticians for his misleading claims about weekend hospital visits. Given the power and influence these people or publications wield, these dodgy statistics are genuinely dangerous.