I love counterintuitive data that challenges commonly held beliefs. And there is a lot of counterintuitive health data out there (For example, data questioning the health benefits associated with taking vitamins  or data that lead to a revolution in how we put our babies to sleep AND cut incidents of SIDS in half ). This story by Aschwanden for fivethirtyeight.com discusses efficacy data for various kinds of cancer screening. Short version of this article: Early cancer screening detects non-cancerous lumps and abnormalities in the human body, which in turn leads to additional and evasive tests and procedures in order to ensure that an individual really is cancer-free or to remove growths that are not life-threatening (but expose an individual to all the risks associated with surgery). Specific Examples: 1) Diagnosis of thyroid cancer in South Korea has increased. Because it is being tested more often. However, death due to thyroid cancer has NOT increased (see figure below)...

I guess "The Longevity Game" sounds better than The Death Calculator. Which is what Northwestern Mutual has created and shared with us. Essentially, you answer questions about yourself (weight, exercise, stress management, driving habits, drug and alcohol habits, etc.) and the Game will give you an estimation for how long you should live based on the data you provide. The Longevity Game, from Northwestern Mutual I use this in class to demonstrate how data and statistics influence certain aspects of our lives (like whether or not an insurer is willing to provide us with insurance coverage). This can also be used to introduce multiple regression, since multiple factors are taken into account when predicting the outcome measure of life expectancy. I also make sure to emphasize to my students that this calculator was created by an insurance company that was founded in 1857 and that this calculator isn't just some random interwebz quiz. Warning: I wouldn't ask...

Gerd "I love heuristics" Gigernezer talking about the misinterpretation of research by the medi a (in particular, misinterpretation of data about oral contraceptives leads to increases in abortions). He argues that such misinterpretation isn't just bad reporting, but unethical.