Proofiness - Charles Seife [89]
This was in late 1969; at the time, even the Nixon administration was not as sanguine about the prospects of success as Alsop was.85
The Pentagon is only one of a vast array of proofiness factories, which manufacture phony statistics and fake facts and cast them into the air in hopes that some ally will make use of them. The strategy often works, even with the most ridiculous Potemkin numbers imaginable. No number is too silly.
In March 2007, a marketing research group created a report for its auto industry clients that came to a very surprising conclusion. Driving the notorious gas-guzzling Hummer H3, they claimed, was better for the environment than driving the energy-efficient Toyota Prius hybrid.
Even a brief look at the report showed that it was chock-full of Potemkin numbers. For example, it claimed, without much justification, that the average Prius would be driven 9,146 miles a year for 11.92 years, clocking a grand total of 109,000 miles. The Hummer H3, on the other hand, would be driven much harder and last much longer before it gave up: 13,543 miles a year for 15.28 years, 207,000 miles in all. (This was nothing compared to the Hummer H1, which would be on the road for an incredible 34.96 years and 379,000 miles on average.) These are clear Potemkin numbers—there’s no way that the typical Hummer H1 would last for nearly 400,000 miles—and they have the effect of inflating the energy efficiency of the Hummers and deflating the energy efficiency of the Prius.
The report was transparent nonsense. But it was music to the ears of anti-green pundits and global warming skeptics. Rush Limbaugh trumpeted the report on his radio show, and it began to gather a buzz. Within a few weeks, it hit the mainstream. In April, Washington Post columnist and inveterate global warming denier George Will crowed about the study: “Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it,” he wrote, repeating the Potemkin numbers. For the next half year, every time a pundit wanted to take a swipe at the green movement, all he needed to do was trot out the report and build a column around it.
Even though the report’s numbers were bogus, they served their purpose. The marketing group helped its clients by giving ammunition to allies of the auto industry. Antienvironmentalist pundits cast doubt upon the wisdom of buying energy-efficient cars. Arguing about whether the Hummer is greener than the Prius is a phony debate—one side is based upon a highly dubious premise—yet the argument was aired again and again in the press.
This is in part because phony debates are another journalistic Achilles’ heel. Reporters are trained to present a neutral point of view, presenting both sides of an argument in a balanced manner. However, when the argument is lopsided, with the vast preponderance of the evidence supporting one side over the other, the reporter’s “balance” is just as phony as the debate—the journalist tends to give too much credence to proofiness-bolstered fringe ideas at the expense of those in the mainstream. No matter how ridiculous one side of the argument is, no matter how dependent it might be upon proofiness, the press dutifully broadcasts it and amplifies it, giving manufactured “facts” a life of their own.
The press is just one target of proofiness. Manufacturers of Potemkin numbers, cherry-picked studies, and other forms of numerical nonsense have plenty of other people interested in their wares. In the right hands, a choice piece of proofiness can be a powerful tool to gain ground in even the most hard-fought political battles.
In the United States, for example, the debate over abortion has been bitter for decades. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade