This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 22, Issue 2, from 2012.
As I write, today is June 25th, 2012, and we’re in the middle of the third round of Wimbledon. The big stories this week: for the men, Roger Federer and his quest for a record 15th Open Era Slam singles win; for the women, Michelle Larcher de Brito. Who?
Larcher de Brito is famous for the wrong reason: she is held to be the loudest (and, per shot, longest) shrieker ever in the women’s game, making Maria “Shriekapova” Sharapova sound quiet. She is also, of course, young (16), Portuguese (a surprising rarity on both professional tours), talented, and cute, with a win-loss record for the year of 13-9 and an upwardly mobile ranking of 91 (she finished 2007 in the 300s). But none of that is my point because The Skeptic is not a tennis magazine. My point is that I’m fed up with listening to the BBC say that her shrieks register at 109db on their “gruntmeters”, which, they keep saying, “is only 10db less than a jet plane taking off.”
I don’t know much about sound pressure, but on the basis of the article I painfully wrote a couple of years ago for the Guardian on the subject of noisy computers, I do know that 10db isn’t “only” anything: it’s not a linear measurement but a logarithmic one. Ten decibels difference in a noise is a change of magnitude of a factor of ten. In other words, Larcher de Brito’s shrieks (and they are shrieks, not grunts) are one-tenth as loud as a jet plane taking off. In fact, it’s even less than that, for two reasons. First of all, the BBC hasn’t specified how they’re actually measuring her shrieks: with what measuring device or from what distance. Second of all, tables on the Net give the noise of a jet plane taking off, from 100 feet, as 130db. Which is, if anything, nearly 100 times as loud as Larcher de Brito.
What actually is 109db? A belt-sander, at six inches.
Now, that’s still loud, and if you’re exposed to it continuously without protection you will have hearing damage, but it’s not a jet plane. And my guess is that the effective noise level for spectators outdoors, at some distance, with sound waves spreading and being absorbed by grass, backdrop, and other spectators, is much, much lower. I doubt anyone is going to have to sign up for cochlear implants after sitting through one of her matches, although you probably want to avoid her at indoor tournaments.
But what’s bugging me is the BBC. I know they don’t recruit their tennis commentators from the ranks of physicists and engineers, but in all the hordes of people assigned to fill those 200 hours they broadcast from Wimbledon every year wouldn’t you think one of them might have had a smattering of ability to, you know, look stuff up? I understand the need to make a dramatic statement and all that, but isn’t it more dramatic if it’s actually true? A belt sander at six inches is quite impressively loud enough, I’d have thought.
Of course, people ask this same question about some of my articles, too, and for the same reason. I don’t write for the Guardian’s technology section because I’m a genius about computers; I write for them because I can get an article in on time at the right length and written to brief, and I’m willing to write about computers. But somehow “the media” is always them, no matter how mainstream the press you work for, and so a working journalist can complain about “the media” with a straight face. One of my more annoying personal characteristics is my eternal desire to correct minute errors of fact and syntax – at least, when they’re made by other people.
The desire to make a good story better is one of the most basic of human instincts and one that pulls even some of the most respected sceptics into errors of hyperbole. It’s bad enough when psychic claimants or, still worse, alternative medicine promoters, do it to promote themselves and their services. It is in many ways worse when sceptics do it because we’re supposed to be the ones promoting the pursuit of truth.
But it’s getting harder and harder to get heard with any kind of sober presentation of the truth. What gets read on the Net is attitude; what sells newspapers and TV shows is controversy. If you also have the facts – as in, say, the MPs’ expenses scandal – so much the better. But they’re not really as much of a requirement as maybe they once were.
That is one reason I find it hard to sympathise with newspapers that trash “the bloggers” on the grounds that they’re not trained as journalists. A lot of journalists aren’t either, and even those who are don’t always seem to care about accuracy. Better science – and especially statistics – education would, as always, help.
As for Larcher de Brito, she has said in a press conference that she is determined to keep squealing like a stuck pig, and if the tennis authorities don’t like it they can fine her. I say it’s time for the audience to take back the game. If everyone shows up to her matches – and those of other notorious shriekers such as Sharapova, both Williams sisters, and up-and-comer Viktoria Azarenka – wearing those big, protective earphones you’re supposed to wear to work with power tools, they might start to get the message. And it’ll make good television.
