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A humorous look at why we should fact check and rigorously look at the origins, sampling, accuracy, and potential bias of all statistics. What happens when, as a society, we rely on "experts" to define the numbers? Should our news organizations be more rigorous in their "fact checking" of important policy statistics? Should they be expected to ask critical questions? Should we think more critically as a citizenry? What will this require of us as students of sociology?
What happens when you usually rely on someone else to take care of something for you? It doesn’t turn out the way you want. Why is this acceptable for our society when it comes to checking important statistics and facts? We rely on the news to give us solid information because they are supposed to be professionals, this is their job, that’s what they are paid to do. Also (probably more importantly) we as a society are lazy. We expect things to be given to us and for these things to be truthful. Our news organizations should be held to the highest standards possible when relaying information to the public. I understand the need to keep stories and information relevant, and that reporters and anchors have a limited window of time to complete this, but that does not excuse the fact that thought and honesty should be practiced.
ReplyDeleteAs college students we are expected to think critically. Hell, we have classes specifically designed for that purpose (hello, IQS class??). Of course journalists should be expected to ask critical questions, that is their profession, its what they have been trained to do. I feel that our society has grown lax, reading into things at face value. Because of this, we as citizens, need to make independent efforts to do our own source checking. We need to ignore the yellow journalism and get back to the basics: the facts.
Healthcare debates are full of generalizations and random, meaningless numbers. Numerical statistics have no value without putting them into perspective, and discussing their specific implications. Given that both sides give different values based on their biases, there is obviously some bullshitting going on. I agree that active citizens should have the integrity to search for the truth amidst all of this bullshit, but can we really expect society as a whole to do that? Should that be our responsibility? Why do we have newsreporters if not to sift through all of the garbage and tell us what we need to know. Part of the problem is that there is no obvious solution supported by clear data (otherwise there would be no need for debating). Regardless, this is no excuse for letting ignorant radicals spew out fake statistics without reliable sources. This just fuels the masses into further ignorance.
ReplyDeleteStatistic manipulation and questionable fact checking are just more examples of how our media leads us astray. I think it is incredibly ironic that most news channel slogans seem to involve something to the effect of “we give you the truth” blah blah blah. It couldn’t be further from the truth these days. Just as the media is guilty of promoting fear in our society (think back to Michael Moore’s documentary) they are also guilty of trying to scare us with statistics if you will. On almost every news program somebody is trying to convince somebody else of something, of course in almost every case there are statistics related to the topic. The likelihood of the debaters using the most accurate and truthful statistics seems slim when they could just as easily find a mind boggling stat and use it out of context to really get a point across…
ReplyDeletePersonally I try to avoid watching the news these days, I feel that firstly the news is so incredibly misleading that it is counter productive and secondly I think if you really care about truth, it only makes sense to research and find it for yourself. Although honestly I’m not sure watching the Daily Show isn’t such a bad way to watch some news. For starters it is absolutely hilarious, furthermore I think that it is mostly free of the seemingly inescapable news network bias. This show has only one allegiance, and it is to comedy. Jon Stewart pokes fun without discrimination, every political view gets flack; and come on, they called CNN goat fuckers. That’s awesome ☺ John Oliver was amazing, I have no idea how he kept a straight face. Anyhow I'm going to leave it there....
When discussing any topic and having two different sides, you know you will always get two completely different views on the issue. Even in the health care debate, both sides are going to share their facts that relate better to their side, but its up to the viewer to decide for themselves if what they are taking in, is the whole truth. Statistics have no meaning or purpose if you don't realize what perspective their coming from. Statistics serve an amazing purpose of getting the point across, but its only useful one can determine for themselves if its the truth.
ReplyDeleteSome people assume that a statistic stated in print or in the media must be, by definition, truth.
ReplyDeleteTo recognize the misuses, one must have some understanding of statistics. We cannot always rely on what the media and “professionals” tell us, me must make our own prediction of whether the statistics they have given us are true or false. We must be able to distinguish between these and know when we are being lied to.
Lies are often told with statistics by searching through all the available data and selecting out little pieces of it to report.
As a rule, if you're going to lie, you should lie about stuff that's hard to check, not stuff that's easy to check. Many times statistics are altered to produce a desired response or prove a point. When you see statistics used in arguments, the number one thing that you should always be careful about is to make sure that you understand exactly what the statistic means. One of the classic ways of misleading people with statistics is take a valid statistic measuring some quantity, and present it as if it represented an entirely different quantity.
Using the wrong measure is incredibly widespread, because it's incredibly effective. It's easy to use to deceive people, because most people won't pay attention to the exact definition used in the statistic
You address the fact that often times statistics are used to produce a desired response. Sociologically, what is the response the media may be looking for in people? What is their purpose of misrepresenting "facts"??
ReplyDeleteWhat are we as a society doing with the information that it is a big deal to find the correct information or to do our own research?
I think that if we rely on the experts to define the numbers we will always end up disappointed. You can come up with all sorts of statistics to argue any point and people tend to manipulate those statistics to their favor. I think it is our job as citizens to do the fact checking. It’s hard to trust what anyone says anymore because most of them time people bend the truth to their benefit. I definitely think that the experts should be asked more critical questions because isn’t that in fact their job? However from the video clip you can see that when the experts are asked more critical questions they tend to avoid answering them by saying “we will have to leave it there”.
ReplyDeleteAs a society we rarely question what we hear especially from a source which we presume will tell us the right facts. It is important to question what you hear or read and look further into it to get the truth. I have been told this ever since I was young because people will stretch the truth in their favor. The news does have limited time to cover stories but maybe it should be a little more planned out and see what is more important to cover in order of limiting time on certain things.
ReplyDeleteI was very surprised when I watched this because I would not have caught all those mistakes or lack of information. I always assumed that CNN especially would not lead me astray. How wrong I was! The best part was the man talking about uninsured Americans. The range of numbers was so large it leads to questions of accuracy. Also, in the end, nobody seemed really sure of the numbers anyway. It seems that the role of an anchor would be to provide the accurate facts, but alas, nobody seems able.
ReplyDeleteI love the Daily Show, and have paid lots of attention to the Health Care topic. Of late I rarely watch CNN because of what we saw, even if it was a montage. I do however find it difficult to lie with statistics considering we aren't given many facts...I love how we give terms like 'expert' but particularity in the news the title 'Senior Correspondent', considering the only difference between them and a 'junior corespondent' is the amount of air-time given. Numbers don't lie, people with numbers do...
ReplyDeleteI think that there is always a way to twist statistics or create them which favors a certain perspective someone might have. From political parties to advertisements, people use statistics to make viewers feel a certain way. For example in the reader book it gives an example about how 1/3 of women enrolled at John Hopkins college had married professors. This sounds deceiving but once you find out there were only 3 women students at this time the numbers seem to be shed in a different light. The statistic may be correct, but it is deceiving. I think it is up to the individual to learn to question and analyze statistics that we hear. I think that how statistics are used and whether they are "misleading" is very objective to the person analyzing it. It is hard to gauge things as being right or wrong, truth or lies when they are objective. For this reason I think it is up to the viewers to question things that they hear.
ReplyDeleteI think that as a student of sociology it is easy to say we need to be critical thinkers of statistics, such as in the news. However there are people all across the United States that probably don't know any better than to trust the "facts" they are given. I think it would be helpful to have pieces done on the news, or in the newspaper that address how easily statistics can be made and how viewers need to examine them more thoroughly. Examples of outrageous statistics need to be pointed out, such as the comedy skit Jon Stewart does here.
I agree with what has been said thus far in that it is important for people to check facts instead of taking them at face value. This is especially because sometimes the people who are allegedly doing the fact checking for us are making false statements of their own. One example of this is Michael Moore's investigation of America's high rate of gun violence. During one scene of the movie, Moore lists the number of gun deaths annually by country. The problem is that he gives the raw number of deaths, not a percentage of the total population. The United States, he says, sees 11,127 deaths annually due to gun violence. He reports Australia having far fewer deaths, only 65 per year. What he fails to clarify is that the United States has 14.5 times as many people as Australia. Obviously, we see more than 14.5 times as many deaths as Australia does, but still, it's an important thing to consider that the facts he reports are better given as statistics.
ReplyDeleteFurther, the next highest number of deaths that he reports is 381 in Germany. This is only the next highest rate that he reports, not the next highest taking all countries into account. In fact, after some digging, I found that there are 22 countries behind the United States that had more deaths per 100,000 people than did Germany in 1994. The United States saw 14.24 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people. The next highest was Brazil with 12.95. Now, the United States still had the highest rate of gun deaths, but there is not the huge gap between us and the next highest country that Moore uses to drive his point home. Although these statistics that I found were 15 years old, that isn't actually a very long time considering that so many countries would have to lower their gun violence rate in less than 15 years in order for Moore's facts to be accurate.
I think that as a society we tend to rely on others for answers, especially someone who is an expert in the area. Why is it that we trust them so much? Is that because they have the “title” to prove that they know a lot about the subject? However like we see the video, although experts may be giving us statistics based on a research, the analysis is really the based on the experts’ knowledge and their opinion. I also think that experiences have a lot to do with opinions. Sometimes what happens to us is the guide that helps us forming opinions about those particular things. Therefore, it’s only natural that the experts will have their two cents in the information they are explaining or analyzing. I think that as students of sociology and all the research we have been looking at and learning about, it important to ask ourselves questions such as who is this person. What’s their background? Who are those that slipped through the cracks? In other words, who does this statistic target and who does it exclude? In addition, asking critical questions we must also want to find out the answer ourselves and how we can improve the answer or look at other ways we can look at the numbers or results. It time for us to not only trust experts, but also question the experts.
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