The 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli purportedly said, “There are three kinds of lies: lied, damned lies, and statistics.” When I recently introduced a group of students to this quote, they were most engaged and amused by the difference between the first two designations — lies and “damned lies.” What would a damned lie have to be like, to distinguish it from a regular lie? No one, seemingly, questioned or was surprised at finding statistics lumped in with the lies, damned or not.
We all seem to know, intellectually, that statistics have the potential to mislead. And yet that has not lessened their influence or led to a more measured and careful examination of the statistics we are typically exposed to every day in the media. Indeed, as a rhetorical device, numbers of any sort have the illusion of respectability, reliability and rigor. Numbers offer “proof,” after all — the promise of facts that take us above and beyond speculations, generalizations and vague impressions. Statistics, potentially at least, are exact. They are rational and closely associated with the scientific method, which, after all, we rely on for all our modern-day discoveries and conclusions.
Statistics seem to hold a mirror up to us and perhaps we tend to believe them precisely because that mirror is not always flattering. The numerical facts are like a bitter pill that enlightenment demands that we swallow, for our own betterment. One in four women have experienced sexual assault at some point in their lives. One in five children have gone to bed hungry. These are the statistics that reproach us; that give voice to what has for too long been hidden and that spur us on to improve. Are they reliable statistics? I would venture to say that they are probably not. If anything, incidents of abuse and neglect tend to be underreported, particularly among marginalized groups. The “real” numbers may be even more disturbing. But then again, the statements in and of themselves are an uncomfortable mix of objectivity and subjectivity. How, exactly, is statistically significant hunger defined? How often does it have to happen to be considered significant, and who decides? The definition of sexual assault has, also, been changed in recent years. It is a broader definition than many realize and the effects of this are controversial.
Statistics such as those mentioned above — ones that point out social inequalities or negative events — usually stem, at some point, from academic studies. These studies may be misquoted or quoted selectively; key terms may not be carefully defined. They may confuse rather than illuminate. However, I do not believe they are as harmful as another set of statistics, those delivered to us on a regular basis by the media. Media relies on sensationalism to stay alive and to compete within a modern world populated by myriad news sources. The old adage “if it bleeds, it leads” is an anachronism; rather, statistics can be used to create a headline where no real story may exist, through the art of selective sampling and creative labeling. It may alarm us, for example, to know that we are in the midst of an “obesity crisis;” but will those stories tell us that the term is defined differently now than it was in the past, and certainly different from how it looks in our imagination and that average body weight has increased only by a scant few pounds in the past century? Of course not. To interrogate and point out these facts would ruin the buzz created by the stories.
The young generation are media savvy and seem to be well aware, in the abstract, that statistics can lie; and yet they are not immune to the alarmist content of those lies. All the more reason to teach logic and critical thinking in our schools!
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