Proofiness - Charles Seife [11]
Lots of scientists have tried to model the effects of global warming, and most have come to a very different conclusion. They tend to agree that global warming is real, that human activities are responsible for a sizable portion of that warming, and that the sea level will indeed rise over the next century.11 There’s an outside chance that the sea level will rise by twenty feet or more if a very-worst-case scenario occurs (such as the near-complete melting of the ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica). However, most serious estimates project a sea level rise much lower than what Gore used. Some climatologists say the oceans will rise two feet or so in the next century; some go as high as four feet—these are the best scientific guesses right now. Yet Gore ignores these more modest estimates and picks the most extreme model of sea level rise—the twenty-footer—so he can flash his dire graphics on the screen. It wowed the audiences, but it was cherry-picking.
George W. Bush is just as guilty of cherry-picking as his erstwhile opponent. Like every president, he put the best possible spin on all of his pet projects. “No Child Left Behind,” for example, was the name for a shift in educational strategy early in his administration; the act, signed by Bush in 2002, offered money to states in return for mandatory testing and other concessions. It was a controversial move. Several years later, in his State of the Union address, Bush declared that No Child Left Behind was working wonders in America’s schools. “Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act . . . and because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math.” This statement was a rare instance of a double cherry-pick.
First, when Bush flatly declared that students are doing better in math and reading, he had to do a bit of cherry-picking. His data came from the Department of Education, which periodically sponsors a national set of assessment tests to determine how well the nation’s students are doing in various subjects. The data show that fourth- and eighth-grade students’ reading and math scores have in fact improved since No Child Left Behind started. But there are other data that he ignored. Twelfth-grade students’ reading scores declined over the same period. And though it’s a little more complicated (the test changed form, making the trend harder to figure out), twelfth-grade math scores also seem to have declined slightly. So saying that students are performing better in reading and math is only true if you ignore the twelfth-grade results that say otherwise. Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative. Cherry-pick number one.
Second, pretending that the improvement in math and reading scores is due to the No Child Left Behind Act requires some cherry-picking too. If you look at the scores carefully, you see that fourth-and eighth-grade math scores have been improving at roughly the same rate since the 1990s, long before the act was passed. Similarly, fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have been improving at roughly the same (very modest) rate in the same time period. By ignoring data from before 2002, Bush was able to pretend that No Child Left Behind was responsible for the improving scores, even when it’s clear that the trend is essentially unchanged over the years. No Child Left Behind only seems responsible for the improved scores if you fail to present earlier data that put the scores in the proper context. Cherry-pick number two.12 Voilà. Bush can declare No Child Left Behind a success—even if it isn’t.
Education statistics are a hotbed of fruit-packing. It’s really hard to improve the school system; it requires lots of money and effort and time to make a change in a huge