Untruthiness in reporting?

Economists entertain me.  They're very good at analyzing statistics and creating information out of data (and make no mistake, they are not the same things).

Over at the Marginal Revolution, guest blogger/economist Justin Wolfors discusses information released by the US Census Bureau that was misleading enough to get hundreds of media outlets from across the country to report that US Divorce Rates are increasing.  The reality is that the opposite is true, but due to an error in the survey, there was a 10% statistical anomoly that caused for the "rise" in divorce rates.

Even though the Census Bureau noted the problem with their survey, it was still not published by the majority of the news sources.

This type of thing happens all the time.  Whether it be politicians mis-representing data to create a problem that they have a solution for, media doing a crappy job of reporting , or people doing a great job of assuming the worst, "facts" that aren't true get reported all the time.

It's hard to see this and not think of the infamous CDC Study that supposedly reported that "pit bulls and Rottweilers made up 44% of all fatal attacks during a 20 year study (note, often the stat on page 4 is used where Pit bulls and Rottweilers accounted for 67% of fatalities during 1997 and 1998 are mis-reported as during the entire course of the study).

However, the study also noted that there weremore than 300 fatal dog attacks during the course of their study....yet the breed of dog(s) involved was only reported by newspapers in 238 cases.  So this study, that has been used by city administrators to ban certain breeds is actually missing nearly 25% of the data.  So the reality is that "pit bulls and rottweilers" together were only confirmed to be involved in roughly 30% of the overall bite cases during the course of the study.  Boy, that sure is different than 67%.

As Wolfers nicely sums it up:

Stephen Colbert’s term “truthiness”, the reigning word of the year, refers to what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. I’m wondering, what is the right word is for something that is a fact but isn’t true? Untruthiness, anyone?

Comments

[Caveat]

Actually, with the CDC study, it's worse.

Remember, the source of the info was news reports. We all know how good the general public is at breed ID.

The famous 67% did cover a one-year period, when the total number of dog bite-related deaths in the US was 27. Alleged 'pit bulls' and 'rottweilers' were responsible for 16.

I don't believe anything I read in the paper or see on the news unless a reputable source can back it up. Bird 'flu, anyone?

[Brent]

Yeah, the CDC report is way worse than that...but even if the you exclude the innacurracies of media reports flaw in the equation, the reality is that they are STILL off because 25% of the bites aren't included. Instead of using total #s and including "unknowns" as a category (that would lead in attacks), they reported without the unknowns...which I pretty much assume is ALL non-Rottweiler's and "pit bull-types" as no newspaper has ever missed an opportunity to report these "breeds" doing anything negative.

[Marjorie]

Let me just throw my hat in the ring, and also emphasize that the category "pit bull-type" is made up of several 'breeds' and mixes.

I've long pointed out that if we created a similar category for dogs of Mastiff origin (i.e. Mastiff, Bull Mastiff, St. Bernard, Great Dane, Rottweiler, etc.)...let's call them "Mastiffies"...then we have a new leader in the dog bite injury-related human fatality statistic.

The same could be said for dogs from the Working Group (or, used to be in the Working Group until recently, such as the German Shepherd Dog). Let's call them "Workies". They too would be at or near the top of the stat's.

When you scrupulously exclude all biting incidents that don't involve a specific breed, then lump a whole bunch of breeds together in another category, what do you think is going ot happen?

Knowing the kinds of people involved in the research compiled in the CDC reports, I don't believe they intentionally perverted the data in that way. I think they just didn't know any better. And I think that's the problem with nearly every discussion about dogs. Average Joes believe they're more knowledgeable than they are, and actual subject matter experts are willing to acquiesce to popular opinion to both placate the public and avoid unwelcome controversy or criticism.