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Earth Could Have Billions More People Than We Ever Realized (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Rural regions account for 43 percent of the world's population – estimated to be just over 8 billion, at the last count – and if the calculations in this new study are correct then the number of unaccounted-for people could potentially stretch into the billions.(...)

"We were surprised to find that the actual population living in rural areas is much higher than the global population data indicates – depending on the dataset, rural populations have been underestimated by between 53 percent to 84 percent over the period studied."(..)

ad: "Not everyone is convinced. Scientists who weren't involved in the study told Chris Stokel-Walker at New Scientist that improvements in satellite imagery and the quality of data collecting in some countries would make these discrepancies smaller."(..)

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This smells like some kind of bias. Find a measuring error in one situation and then project the maximum error onto everything.

Any statisticians here, is there a name for this?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

The title is, unsurprisingly, heavily exaggerated. The study does not claim there are "billions more people". They studied 307 different dam construction projects around the word, and found the actual number of affected people in those rural areas was like 40-80% higher than estimated.

Their conclusion is that it's likely the population of the world is quite underestimated, but they don't want to guess by how much, that's all cooked up by the "journalist".

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This smells like

Don't get too scientific now.

It's just a study. Like many others. All studies are biased in some way. A proper scientific study can question status quo and or provide alternate views or methods.

In the end most scientists find 8 B people a reasonable and probable amount. But they don't know, as those are estimates. The guys from this new study just used a different approach and come up with maybe 1B more.

Original publication Nature