Global wine shortage?
The Herald has a story about a global wine shortage and its potential benefits for NZ producers. The story links to the Morgan Stanley report that it’s based on, and presents it well.
However (and you knew something like this was coming), Felix Salmon at Reuters has also written about the report, using more than just this one report as a source. Find out how the Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin numbers that show a modest and increasing surplus
turn into the Morgan Stanley numbers that show an increasing wine deficit
He also cites wine industry experts pointing out that the shortage story just doesn’t add up, and concludes
But never mind all that: the Morgan Stanley report has numbers and charts, and journalists are very bad at being skeptical when faced with such things. Even Finz’s Chronicle article, which sensibly poured cold water on the report, ends with a “Wine by the numbers” box which simply reproduces all of Morgan Stanley’s flawed figures. And besides, the debunkings are never going to go viral in the way that the original “wine shortage!” articles did.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »