Miles out, mate!

Interesting research carried out by the Royal Statistical Society suggests that we generally tend to vastly overestimate the level of what might be called "social problems" - things like the level of benefit fraud, immigration, crime, teenage pregnancy and the like.  I think much of the blame for this must lie with the media, who have long realised that pandering to people's prejudices sells papers.  What to do about it though?  Not easy - perhaps the RSS should take out regular adverts in all the papers giving us the facts - but then, we don't like to be told we're wrong, do we?