unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [70]
Democrats play the same counting games. The Democratic National Committee ran a TV ad in advance of the speech we just mentioned, faulting Bush for “2.8 Million Manufacturing Jobs Lost,” among other things. Notice the word “manufacturing.” In fact, the U.S. economy had gained a net total of more than 2 million jobs since Bush’s first day in office (first losing 3 million, then gaining 5 million). Most people probably aren’t aware that manufacturing these days accounts for only a little more than one job out of every ten in the United States. And manufacturing had been almost the only major sector to decline under Bush’s entire tenure. The DNC wasn’t counting jobs in fast-growing sectors such as construction, health care, and finance.
Numerical flimflams are probably as old as numbers themselves, and we’ve already discussed a several of them. Still worth reading is the classic How to Lie with Statistics, a little book that Darrell Huff wrote more than half a century ago. Some of his examples sound quaint today. For example, he questions a claim that Yale graduates of the class of 1924 were earning an average of $25,111 a year, because that seemed far too grand a sum. Huff wrote that in 1954; the equivalent in 2006 dollars would be somewhere close to $180,000. Nevertheless, the numerical and statistical tricks Huff exposes are ageless and still in everyday use, and his style is so readable that we’ve tried to match it in this book.
RULE #6: Know Who’s Talking
IF YOUR DOCTOR RECOMMENDS IT, PROTECTING YOURSELF AGAINST a heart attack or stroke by taking aspirin can cost as little as a penny a day. The aspirin reduces the likelihood that blood clots will form. However, studies have been appearing in medical journals suggesting that large numbers of patients need to be tested for “aspirin resistance” in case aspirin no longer protects them. These same studies suggest that many patients may need an aspirin substitute costing $4 a day. But who’s paying for these studies? As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in a front-page story in April 2006, many of those raising the “aspirin resistance” alarm have financial ties to the companies that stand to profit from selling the tests and drugs. The newspaper reported that one study, which declared that “resistance” affects perhaps 30 percent of those taking aspirin, was funded by the test’s maker, Accumetrics, Inc., and by Schering-Plough Corp., which sells a drug being tested for its potential benefit to patients resistant to aspirin. This funding wasn’t disclosed by the medical journal that published the article.
Such financial ties should make us skeptical of the research findings. This is a clear conflict of interest. The author’s private interest conflicts with his responsibility to provide unbiased, trustworthy research—the public interest. Did the study’s author, deliberately or otherwise, skew the research toward a finding that would create a profit for the sponsors, and make them more inclined to pay him to conduct future research? What other research did these companies fund, and did it come up with contrary findings that the companies suppressed? We’re not saying that drug companies shouldn’t finance research, or that paying for a study automatically produces the result they want. But knowing who’s behind a statement is important in considering how much weight to give it.
It’s not always obvious who’s behind a study or a group. Until it disbanded in 2002, the “Global Climate Coalition” had a name that sounded neutral and a website showing happy children and green fields; but it was a lobby group made up of trade associations for industries including oil, chemicals, logging, agribusiness, and utilities, all of them financially motivated to avoid taxes or defeat regulation of their emissions of greenhouse gases. The