In December, two senior officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention published a short report in one of the American Medical Association’s journals, asking the public to believe that sunbeds cause 3,234 emergency room visits per year in the United States — a figure that was promoted to news organizations everywhere.

But 3,234 isn’t a real number; it’s a manufactured number. And as you look closer and closer at the math used to create it, you have to wonder how this “research letter” (two pages, if you include the graphs) ever got published. This paper has the appearance of content designed to misrepresent the topic:

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