Sunday 24 April 2011

Cock up or conspiracy?

A little recommended reading this Sunday comes from Ep-ology, where Carl Phillips is not convinced that the Office of National Statistics got their alcohol figures wrong by accident.

Given how simple this is, and that it is probably taught in the second or maybe even first semester of any decent applied statistics program, there is no excuse for the British study. This is not something that an even slightly competent researcher could possibly fail to notice in the data even if they somehow overlooked the information about how the definition changed ("hmm, let's look at the trend from year to year: down a bit, down a bit, same, down a bit, huge increase, down a bit, down a bit – yup, it sure looks like an upward tend to me").

Either someone was intentionally trying to mislead their audience or they were in so far over their heads – and by this I mean they knew absolutely nothing about analyzing statistics, but did so anyway – that they had no excuse for claiming their analysis was worth anything. Either way, it is important to recognize the difference between honest disagreement (which this obviously was not, since the ONS retracted it), honest mistakes (which this was not because the mistake is too glaring to make honestly), and dishonesty (either in the form of lying about the world or about one's qualifications).

This, of course, is a reference to the ONS's claim (since debunked and retracted) that women's drinking is on the rise in Britain. Go read.

5 comments:

JJ said...

So why can't this be done in the media with 'passive smoking' studies which are just as disingenuous?

Anonymous said...

Because for "passive smoking" the lie has already been cemented into truth and there is too much money, power, control and glory riding on it to switch horses in mid-stream and say the truth. Other than that, it's really the same difference, scientifically and statistically speaking.

DaveA said...

Hi JJ. I am trying to publish 2,000 papers I have on the one blog. Your comments are invited.

http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/

JJ said...

Thanks Dave, will do. I have seen your blog and am impressed.

Shall put you on my blog-roll

James Higham said...

It's got to the point where they're so brazen these days. If there's an agenda, the figures are fitted to it. Always was so but quite blatant now.