Female hurricanes deadlier than male hurricanes?

According to a new study, hurricanes with female names kill more people because Americans are less fearful of storms named after women:

The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women — they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.

Then again, maybe this study blows… (If your first name is Hurricane, I don’t even care what your last name is.)

Other aspects of the team’s analysis didn’t make sense to Lazo. For example, they included indirect deaths in their fatality counts, which includes people who, say, are killed by fallen electrical lines in the clean-up after a storm. “How would gender name influence that sort of fatality?” he asks. He also notes that the damage a hurricane inflicts depends on things like how buildings are constructed, and other actions that we take long before a hurricane is named, or even before it forms.

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