You clearly state in your original post that your 6 million and 3 million figures are in terms of deaths in the UK. The GP was pointing out that you were wrong: they are worldwide figures, and not UK-only figures. A little less stridency in the tone of your reply would have boosted your credibility and made you seem a lot less prone to hyperbole.

> You clearly state in your original post that your 6 million and 3 million figures are in terms of deaths in the UK. The GP was pointing out that you were wrong: they are worldwide figures, and not UK-only figures.

I've said that's correct.

You're conflating the UK vs worldwide statement with the numbers given.

If there's a call for stats and sources, then would it not be fair to treat them with rigour? Or should what I said be examined in fine detail, but not the reply?

Are you really complaining that Tenobrus used a slightly lower estimate than you when correcting your two orders of magnitude misstatement?

Tenobrus corrected me on two accounts: 1/ UK vs. worldwide 2/ The exact figures

I'm saying the figures are correct, and said plainly that it should have been worldwide, not the UK.

OK, fine, statistics are important, but if you're going to make statements espousing the importance of statistics, then you better have the right ones -- or at least be aware of them --, and not just copy 'n paste the first few from your search engine of choice!

It takes some knowledge to put together a commentary on the current situation with drugs. Any idiot with an AOL connection can Bing some stats -- badly.

Edit: Changed the search-engine-as-a-verb to 'Bing', from 'Google'.

>Tenobrus corrected me on two accounts: 1/ UK vs. worldwide 2/ The exact figures

I disagree. It looks like one simple correction to me, and isn't meant to be an excessively precise number.

And you keep acting like his number is wrong. It's not. It's right next to the number you intended.

You're being picky and pedantic because someone corrected you, and it's ill-becoming.

Correction #1:

> By "3 million, in the UK" do you actually mean "2.5 million, worldwide"?

Correction #2:

> Tabacco is also only 5 million worldwide.

Note the use of the word 'also'. It means in addition to.

> It's right next to the number you intended.

Why bring it up, if the numbers are right next to each other? Who's being pedantic?

> And you keep acting like his number is wrong.

His numbers are wrong, if the point being my numbers were wrong. If he knew about both sets of figures, would he have still quoted 2.5/5 million? No!

I've not tried to make the figures out to be larger than they are. I made a mistake with where they apply.

Just because I didn't link to a set of figures (can't link to everything), doesn't mean they're not correct.

People are acting like I pulled the numbers out of my ass. And apparently I'm prone to hyperbole (see nagrom's comment).

> Tabacco is also only 5 million worldwide.

The dude can't spell 'tobacco'. That's nitpicking!