Lies, damned lies and statistics

Excellent essay on how statistics can be used to skew the results of a given sample. Specific examples from Government agencies like the EPA From John Brignell at Numberwatch:

The statistical bludgeon
In the dark ages literacy was a secret jealously guarded by the senior clerics. It gave them power in the monopoly of handing down the written and immutable law; and, incidentally, enabled them to conceal their errors (and perversions) of interpretation. The lower clergy were only able to copy documents as arrays of symbols without intrinsic meaning, but God-given, and their errors propagated (such as confusing the Gothic long �s� with �f�).

In these days of almost universal literacy (of sorts) there is an analogy in the case of statistical literacy, though not one to be taken too far. The senior clergy understand statistics (to a patchy extent) and use or abuse them at will. The junior clergy put in numbers and extract them from computer packages, without understanding, and pass them on. The laity know their place, but are impressed.

Uncertainty is not an easy concept to accept. You are accustomed to getting your exercise book back from the teacher, with a tick against the sums that are right and a cross against the ones that are wrong. When someone tells you that there is a ninety percent probability that the answer is A and a ten percent probability that it is B, it is a bridge too far for many. They are grateful when an authority (say the EPA) saves them from crossing this pons asinorum by asserting that 90% = right and 10%=wrong. Therein lies a tale of grand deceit and devilry. The uncertainty has been removed at the cost of understanding.

Just as the mediaeval clergy used their own privileged interpretations of the written laws to bludgeon the laity into conformity, so the modern numerical necromancers use their interpretations of numbers to the same end. In both cases the penalty for indiscipline is the threat of pestilence, hell-fire and damnation; while the cost of conformity is a simple but substantial tithe on your income.

A bit more:

You could write not just a book but a whole set of encyclopaedias on the statistical abuses carried out by the global warming industry. Globally it is a trillion dollar business, many people (some notorious but most invisible) making themselves multi-millionaires from its manifold branches. It is justified by reference to an alleged consensus, a word that is foreign to scientific argument. The cost is borne by ordinary people, be they Africans locked into primitive and unhealthy life styles or Europeans thrust into fuel poverty by onerous stealth taxes. It also provides a power base for ambitious politicians and bureaucrats. There are virtually no dissenters among the ruling political classes, though there are growing numbers in the general populations.

The smoking gun:

It is fairly safe to assume, for example, that anything coming out of the USA EPA is fraudulent. Ever since their first and greatest coup, the �metastudy� on environmental tobacco smoke (involving at least five gross statistical frauds), was embraced by authoritarian politicians, they have been given carte blanche to ignore the methods and laws of science. They ruthlessly exploit this licence for purely political ends.

The EPA does not now even bother with generation of fraudulent statistics: it makes ex-cathedra pronouncements that defy the laws of science. For example: anything they arbitrarily choose to declare as a poison kills with no lower limit of dosage, contrary to the first law of toxicology (that the poison is in the dose).

The EPA has evolved into a congress-bypass operation, enabling an administration with water melon tendencies to mount attacks on essential indigenous industries, such as energy. It is virtually unmonitored in its activities, yet disposes of nearly a billion dollars of taxpayers� money annually. A fine and trenchant essay by Henry I Miller on Investing in bad science includes the remark:

�For some reason I was favored with periodic reports of the research funded by the epa. The overwhelming majority of it was shoddy, irrelevant, and unpublishable.�

which just about sums it up.

Much more at the site. Excellent resource...