Numbers Lie – Statistics, Politics and the Media, Part 1

Years ago I worked as a Marketing Manager for a large health products company.   It was an eye opening experience.  I was astounded to find out how willing top management was to distort information (in other words lie) in order to increase sales and profits or to boost the price of the company’s stock.  I was constantly under pressure to mislead the public and decided that I needed to leave that profession to preserve my integrity.

Marketing professionals are not the only “spin jockeys” who distort information to forward their agenda.  Political advisors and the politicians who hire them have honed this skill into a fine art.  One of the most powerful forms of distortion used by the spin jockeys is to quote numbers and statistics that support their assertions and conclusions.

Now the key to a successful distortion is to use as much of the truth as possible.  In the case of numbers and statistics it works best to use real numbers rather than making them up.  The distortion begins with the source of the numbers…If you hire XYZ Mail Order University to do a study for you they can probably engineer almost any result you wish by setting up the study in a certain way that biases the data.  This is the garbage in - garbage out phenomenon you have heard so much about.  Just because the number was accurately calculated does not mean that what is being measured is being measured properly.

More commonly the spin jockeys will look for numbers that forward their agenda and discard data that is contradictory to their purposes.  A good example of this is how certain politicians dealt with issue of economic inflation in the US during the past 5 years.  We kept getting told that there was very little inflation based on the Consumer Price Index and other statistics.  However, the prices for necessities such as fuel, housing and food kept rising without a corresponding increase in wages.  The net result was that the average consumer was spending more and getting less – something that the politicians did not wish to call attention to.

Another tactic used by the spin jockeys is in the language used to refer to the numbers.

When 95% of the world’s climate scientists were in agreement that indeed the planet was warming, and that human activities were at least partially responsible, there were still a handful of “scientists” who maintained that there was not enough evidence to know this for absolute certain.  The politicians would ignore the data being published in the scientific journals and say that it was “controversial” whether human activities had anything to do with CO2 levels or changes in the Earth’s climate – thus leading the public to the conclusion that nothing needed to be done.  Our acceptance of this distortion may come back to haunt us in the coming years.

Another level of distortion exists when someone is responsible for reporting figures that they think will affect the public in a negative way.  An example of this is how political leaders in the US have been referring to the economy during the past few years.

When people think the economy is growing they are more likely to invest and spend – which in turn tends to stimulate the economy.  If they think the economy is contracting then they are more likely to sell off investments and reduce spending – which tends to put a dampener on economic growth.  This causes the people who are assigned to report on the condition of the economy to be excessively conservative when reporting on the possibility of a recession.  These folks kept insisting that we were not in a recession as the dollar plunged in value and as the housing and stock markets contracted – they were afraid of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and making things worse by scaring consumers.  Now that the economy has been contracting for an extended period of time the “experts” are finally “officially” admitting that we are in a recession.

By this point you are beginning to understand how easily numbers can lie.  Next week we will continue with this topic and also take a look at how honest mistakes in creating and using numbers can lead us astray.   We will wrap up by reviewing the solutions to this issue.

While you are waiting you might wish to check out one of our 5 min. podcast radio shows called 5 minutes to a Brighter Future.  You can either listen online or download to listen later or on you MP3 player.  Click here to go directly to our listen page and press the link at the top of the list that says “Podcasts”.  Happy listening and stay tuned!