Hans Rosling, the popular Swedish medical statistician, does a great line in pointing out the degree to which most people’s perceptions of the world are just plain wrong. My short recommended read for this weekend is much the same sort of thing, but based on a very recent survey.

This month, Ipsos MORI has been conducting a 14-country survey to find out people’s perceptions of the make-up of their populations and the scale of social problems. On most questions, the population of each country was way out of whack with reality. My recommended read is Zach Wener-Fligner’s snappy blog post about some of the key findings – but if you have time, it’s worth exploring some of the detail of the survey on the Ipsos MORI site, too.

Or if you haven’t got the time for that, here’s an infographic they put together with some interesting findings:

Of course, there are lots of interesting implications here for democracy and social norming, and some interesting thoughts about responsibility, too. Though, before getting into this, we should take a moment to recognise that Great Britain did pretty well in the survey ranking, for all that we criticise ourselves for this sort of thing.

When articles have been published about similar surveys in the past, many commentators have reacted by blaming the media. I disagree: I don’t think that non-Public-Service media has any implicit responsibility to inform the electorate. I think their responsibility is to their shareholders, and if distorting the truth without breaking the law increases profit, then sobeit.

This is why Public Service media is so important, and so valuable. Public Service media outlets should, indeed, have a responsibility for educating and informing. This is a difficult task against the torrent of inaccurate information from elsewhere, especially when those outlets choose to pursue large audiences at the same time as giving entirely accurate information. I would challenge the existing industry assumption that Public Service media should obtain a large audience. Does it matter how many people consume BBC News, for example, provided it is understood to be a reliable source in times of uncertainty?

But then, I guess, there’s a reasonable counter-argument that if it doesn’t pursue an audience, the widely understood social narrative will likely deviate further from reality.

It’s a complicated problem – and shouting about the Daily Mail doesn’t help.

This Economist article on the potential use of mobile phone tracking data in the West African Ebola outbreak us quite interesting. I’m not nearly expert enough to make any meaningful commentary on how useful or otherwise such data would be, but it seems unhelpful for networks to block data sharing.

But – and here’s the rub – there’s a really distracting logical flaw in the middle of the article. The Leader claims that tracking based on incomplete mobile phone data is “better than simulations based on unreliable statistics”.  Yet the Leader also describes the mobile phone data as incomplete and imperfect, which means it, too, will be a simulation based on unreliable statistics. And, besides, if they’re bemoaning the lack of availability of the data in the first place, how do they have the foggiest clue as to whether it will be better or worse?

I expect better from Economist Leaders!

My recommended read for this weekend is by food critic Jay Rayner, and was published a couple of weeks ago in The Guardian. I think they would have been better holding it back until this week: as Tesco’s profits drop precipitously, too many commentators have said ridiculous things about the future of supermarkets in general, and Rayner’s article provides a nice counterbalance.

With my public health hat on, I would’ve liked Rayner to include some commentary in his article on the hygiene standards supermarkets have introduced to the supply chain, and the way that this has improved food safety to a level never previously achieved in the history of humanity. But he makes a good case without it, and it is refreshing to see The Guardian, of all the newspapers, celebrating the achievements of supermarkets for once.

My recommended read for this week is The Body Electric by Ferris Jabr in Outside.

As it turns out, lightning strikes are commoner than one might think, and the odds of surviving are pretty good. But there are bizarre, under-researched and under-explained after effects associated with survival.

In his article, Jabr interviews some of the 500-a-year US survivors of lightning strikes, and explores several of the after-effects. It’s a really absorbing story, almost all of which was new to me. The only thing I remember from medical school about lightning strikes is the distinctive skin marking but I have learn from microcurrent machine reviews that people use this machine to help with this a reduce a little the impact on the skin. This article made me wonder whether I should have been taught more – but then, probably as a result of the more temperate UK climate, human lightning strikes are rather less common here than in the US.

Anyway, it’s well worth a read.

My recommended read for this weekend is an article from the back end of last year by Charles Arthur of The Guardian, in which he posits that tablets are killing off the PC business.

While sales of computers are slowing and tablets are rising (though by no means as quickly as they once were), it’s clear to anyone that there are roles for both. The journalistic technique of dichotomising technologies and claiming that one is “killing” another might be good for getting clicks and hits, but it is rarely true. Indeed, when Arthur himself wrote in 2009 that “laptops are taking over computing, especially with the rise of netbooks”, he was evidently wrong.

But, sniping aside, the insights in Arthur’s article make it worth reading. For instance:

The 2012 Greek bailout – the biggest in history, requiring the renegotiation of €146bn of bonds among 135 principal bond owners in just 30 days – was completed using iPads.

Over the past twelve months or so, I’ve seen a real shift in how people use tablets in my line of work. A couple of years ago, when I went to meetings, most people would be taking notes using paper, and a couple would be using laptops. Then there seemed to be a period where some people switched paper for tablets. And then, within months, it seemed that laptops and paper had been almost completely usurped by tablets.

I now sit in meetings relatively frequently where I’m the only person handwriting notes – even I tend to view papers on my tablet, but prefer the flexibility of handwritten notes which I usually then scan in and store electronically with the papers.

Anyway, I digress – enjoy Arthur’s article.

This weekend, my recommended read is a great piece about the online missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s by Bianca Bosker of the Huffington Post.

The article is fairly long but very engaging, telling a fascinating tale of how the Mormon church is updating some of its traditions in the face of modernity. It doesn’t assume too much prior knowledge of Mormon practices, but keeps explanations of them succinct.

The article misses an opportunity to explore why a Church with (by definition) a selective set of beliefs based on faith rather than evidence should find such success online, where the sum of humanity’s knowledge is merely a click away. This is an interesting conundrum that runs contrary to the commentary occasionally used by noted atheists to argue that knowledge sets people free from religion. Here, setting the Church’s stall in among the world’s collected knowledge appears more successful than turning up on someone’s doorstep and selling a singular uncontextualised vision. Fascinating stuff!

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a book which has been on my ‘to read’ list for years. But, in the light of the recent outbreak, I thought the time to dive in has come.

The book describes an outbreak of Ebola, which occurred in the late 1980s in Washington, DC, a mere stone’s throw from the White House. The outbreak initially spread among imported monkeys and (I don’t think this is too much of a spoiler) then to a small number of humans. The narrative follows the medical, public health, and scientific teams involved in controlling and tackling the outbreak; describing not just their actions, but also their thoughts, feelings, fears, and reflections.

Preston converts this tale into a page-turning thriller. Much of the content isn’t typical thriller material, but Preston does a sterling job of explaining complex scientific concepts and processes in simple (yet accurate) terms; this is quite an achievement. Preston lends his eloquence to horrifying descriptions of Ebola-related deaths, which, I suspect, some readers might find hard to stomach. He also adds heaps of drama and tension that might reflect the atmosphere of a group of experts grappling with an outbreak of a deadly virus.

However, Preston does tend to lean toward the more extreme end of the physical and emotional range. He certainly has a talent for sensationalism. It is important to consider this book for what it is: a mass-market paperback thriller based on real events, not a level-headed factual report.

This book should appeal to many audiences: those with a passing interest in public health and infectious diseases; those with an interest in how major incidents and outbreaks are coordinated and handled; and those who enjoy a horrifying, suspenseful, and thrilling tale of a race against time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I admire the considerable skill of the author in creating a page-turner that stays true to the facts of the case, and in deftly explaining complex scientific concepts. Yet, I don’t think this is a book that I’ll ever re-read; once is enough. Still, I would absolutely recommend it.