In Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem relates that "in this country alone... about 150,000 females die of anorexia each year," more than three times the annual fatality rate from automobile accidents for the entire population. Steinem cites Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth as a source, where Wolf asks, "When confronted with a vast number of emaciated bodies starved not by nature but by men, one must notice a certain resemblance." Wolf, in turn, cites Joan Brumberg's Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa, which asserts that women who study eating problems "seek to demonstrate that these disorders are an inevitable consequence of a misogynistic society that demeans women... by objectifying their bodies." Brumberg, in turn, cites the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association, whose president, Dr. Diane Mickley, says "We were misquoted." In a 1985 newsletter the association referred to 150,000 to 200,000 sufferers (not fatalities) of anorexia nervosa, broadly defined. The actual morbidity rate has been estimated to be up to 100 by the National Center for Health Statistics.

During the early 1990s, several newspapers and magazines reported that domestic violence against pregnant women was now responsible for more birth defects than all other causes combined, according to a March of Dimes report. What the March of Dimes actually concluded was that more women are screened for birth defects than are ever screened for domestic battery.

At a news conference prior to the 1993 Super Bowl organized by a coalition of women's groups, reporters were informed that Super Bowl Sunday is "the biggest day of the year for violence against women," on which forty percent more women would be battered. A large media mailing by Dobisky Associates warned at-risk women, "Don't remain at home with him during the game." Lenore Walker, a Denver psychologist and author of The Battered Woman, appeared on "Good Morning America" claiming to have compiled a ten-year record showing a sharp increase in violent incidents against women on Super Bowl Sundays. The Boston Globe repeated the claim, and Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times even referred to the "Abuse Bowl." But when sociology and criminal justice professor Janet Katz, one of the principal authors of the underlying study, was contacted directly, she said, "That's not what we found at all." Instead, they had found that an increase in emergency-room admissions "was not associated with the occurrence of football games in general." Later, when other reporters pressed Lenore Walker to detail her findings, she said they were not available. "We don't use them for public consumption," she explained, "we use them to guide us in advocacy projects." After being thoroughly exposed and retracted in several periodicals, the factoid still appears in such books as How to Make the World a Better Place for Women in Five Minutes a Day.

[Ed.: Naomi Wolf, a purported Rhodes scholar, also cited statistics claiming that 44 percent of San Francisco women have "suffered rape or attempted rape," that "date rape" is "more common than left-handedness, alcoholism and heart attacks," and that "100 million young girls worldwide are being raped by adult men—usually their fathers—often day after day, week after week, year in, year out." Studies also conclusively show that 85 percent of all statistics are made up.]

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