• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Towleroad Gay News

Gay Blog Towleroad: More than gay news | gay men

  • Body
  • Daily Resist
  • POLITICS
  • Travel
  • Music
  • Theatre
  • Film
  • TV
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Men
  • Marriage Equality
  • Space
  • Trans Rights
  • Books
  • Science
  • Gay Iconography
  • TowleREAD

Hurricanes With Female Names Cause More Fatalities, But Not Really

June 3, 2014 by Christian Walters

Hurricane Katrina

You may have seen a pop science news article floating around the past few days outlining how hurricanes with female names are more deadly. The higher average death count is thought to be not because the storms themselves coincidentally happen to be more dangerous, but rather subtle social conditioning towards gender roles mean that people view the “feminine” storms as weaker and thus take fewer safety precautions.

It’s an interesting theory that gets completely dismantled when Slate points out a major flaw in the study’s methodology:

But [National Center for Atmospheric Research social scientist Jeff] Lazo thinks that neither the archival analysis nor the psychological experiments support the team’s conclusions. For a start, they analysed hurricane data from 1950, but hurricanes all had female names at first. They only started getting male names on alternate years in 1979. This matters because hurricanes have also, on average, been getting less deadly over time. “It could be that more people die in female-named hurricanes, simply because more people died in hurricanes on average before they started getting male names,” says Lazo.

30 years of female-only names and higher overall fatalities are going to pretty heavily skew the data. To prove this point, the Slate author uses the research’s own data from ’79 through the present, removes the dramatic outlier of Hurricane Sandy, and shows that the deaths are actually slightly higher for the male-named hurricanes, but not to any notable degree.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Hurricanes, Hurricanes, News, science, Science, weather, weather

Recent Posts

  • Ben Sasse, Stella Tennant, Gautam Raghavan, Andrew Yang, Kirk COVIDiot Cameron, Emma Corrin: HOT LINKS

    Ben Sasse, Stella Tennant, Gautam Raghavan, Andrew Yang, Kirk COVIDiot Cameron, Emma Corrin: HOT LINKS

    1 day ago
  • Trump Appoints Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Practitioner and Christian Extremist Marcus Bachmann (Husband of Michelle) to Advisory Panel

    Trump Appoints Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Practitioner and Christian Extremist Marcus Bachmann (Husband of Michelle) to Advisory Panel

    1 day ago
  • Paul Manafort Issues Bootlicking Tweets, His First in 4 Years, After Trump Pardons Him Along with 25 Others

    Paul Manafort Issues Bootlicking Tweets, His First in 4 Years, After Trump Pardons Him Along with 25 Others

    1 day ago
  • ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot, Miley Cyrus, Nicholas Cage Swearing, Dr. Birx, Ellen’s Mask, John Thune, Jerry Falwell Jr: HOT LINKS

    ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot, Miley Cyrus, Nicholas Cage Swearing, Dr. Birx, Ellen’s Mask, John Thune, Jerry Falwell Jr: HOT LINKS

    2 days ago
Previous Post: « Actor Fired For Ejecting Homophobic Heckler During ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ Performance
Next Post: Wednesday Speed Read: Houston, Rick Perry, Florida, California Primaries »

Primary Sidebar

  • Ben Sasse, Stella Tennant, Gautam Raghavan, Andrew Yang, Kirk COVIDiot Cameron, Emma Corrin: HOT LINKS

  • Trump Appoints Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Practitioner and Christian Extremist Marcus Bachmann (Husband of Michelle) to Advisory Panel

  • Paul Manafort Issues Bootlicking Tweets, His First in 4 Years, After Trump Pardons Him Along with 25 Others

Recent Posts

  • Ben Sasse, Stella Tennant, Gautam Raghavan, Andrew Yang, Kirk COVIDiot Cameron, Emma Corrin: HOT LINKS

    Ben Sasse, Stella Tennant, Gautam Raghavan, Andrew Yang, Kirk COVIDiot Cameron, Emma Corrin: HOT LINKS

    1 day ago
  • Trump Appoints Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Practitioner and Christian Extremist Marcus Bachmann (Husband of Michelle) to Advisory Panel

    Trump Appoints Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Practitioner and Christian Extremist Marcus Bachmann (Husband of Michelle) to Advisory Panel

    1 day ago
  • Paul Manafort Issues Bootlicking Tweets, His First in 4 Years, After Trump Pardons Him Along with 25 Others

    Paul Manafort Issues Bootlicking Tweets, His First in 4 Years, After Trump Pardons Him Along with 25 Others

    1 day ago
  • ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot, Miley Cyrus, Nicholas Cage Swearing, Dr. Birx, Ellen’s Mask, John Thune, Jerry Falwell Jr: HOT LINKS

    ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot, Miley Cyrus, Nicholas Cage Swearing, Dr. Birx, Ellen’s Mask, John Thune, Jerry Falwell Jr: HOT LINKS

    2 days ago
  • How Many Christmas Movie Parodies Can You Count in Edmund Bagnell’s Holiday Classic? — WATCH

    How Many Christmas Movie Parodies Can You Count in Edmund Bagnell’s Holiday Classic? — WATCH

    2 days ago
  • Palm Springs Gay Clothing-Optional Resort INNdulge is Up for Sale

    Palm Springs Gay Clothing-Optional Resort INNdulge is Up for Sale

    2 days ago
  • Buffalo Gay Bar Open Since 1974 Facing Closure After Being Rejected for  COVID Relief Grant and Owner Wonders if LGBTQ Businesses Were Excluded: WATCH

    Buffalo Gay Bar Open Since 1974 Facing Closure After Being Rejected for COVID Relief Grant and Owner Wonders if LGBTQ Businesses Were Excluded: WATCH

    2 days ago
  • North Carolina Wedding Venue Tells Gay Couple to Find Somewhere Else to Get Married: WATCH

    North Carolina Wedding Venue Tells Gay Couple to Find Somewhere Else to Get Married: WATCH

    2 days ago
  • Amy Klobuchar Rips Trump Over Pardons for Criminal Cronies, Meddling in COVID Stimulus Relief: ‘This is an Attack on Every American’ — WATCH

    Amy Klobuchar Rips Trump Over Pardons for Criminal Cronies, Meddling in COVID Stimulus Relief: ‘This is an Attack on Every American’ — WATCH

    2 days ago
  • Dominion Voting Systems Employee Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Newsmax, OANN, Michelle Malkin and More

    Dominion Voting Systems Employee Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Newsmax, OANN, Michelle Malkin and More

    2 days ago

Most Commented

  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Footer

Copyright © 2020 · Log in