Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes

[valkeakuulas]

People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study. Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes

Comments

[chaya]

Add tags asap pls

[valkeakuulas]

done!

[chaya]

[darsynia]

This is utter bullshit in SO many ways, but the most prominent one I've seen so far is pointing out that male names for hurricanes weren't even introduced until 1979! And even then, they were every other year, for a while. (edit: so yes, they mention that in this article; another I read on the same subject totally left that out, wtf)

Not only that, but as the years progress, we get better on average at not dying due to hurricanes. I just... this study just seems full of BS.

[ayashi]

The National Geographic post went over a number of issues with the study (including the ones you mentioned), I thought it was an interesting read:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why-have-female-hurricanes-killed-more-people-than-male-ones/

[blackjedii]

Yeaaah I am not sure how names would directly influence people in a hypothetical situation because you're already going to have a pre-set bias about hurricanes regardless of names. A person, certainly but a hurricane is a hurricane.

Like living where I do where the last one that had serious damage was Andrew I have no idea about hurricanes besides "be very careful" so of course I would treat it as dangerous but not flat out deadly. Whereas my relatives who live on the coast are a lot more prepared, a lot more aware, and a lot more knowledgeable.

It sounds like they were using college kids (in Illinois no less!! or the Internet!) as their testers in which case I'd hope they asked "where are you from" and looked at the pattern of hurricanes in their general area in relation to the person's age and background.

[roseofjuly]

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).

I wonder if they controlled for the Category of the storm? If so, these are interesting findings. I'm willing to believe that unconscious gender bias plays a small role.

[blackjedii]

Female and apparently was enough of an outlier to greatly affect the results.