Steven S. Ross A lmost everybody knows pollution is getting worse, few whites are missed in census counts, and the federal budget is in balance. Unfortunately, almost everybody is wrong. None of these things is true, at least not exactly. If that weren't bad enough, many people in power are either among the ill-informed, or have a tendency to cloak political decisions in scientific garb to make their point.
Statistical sins differ from data that are incomplete or inaccurate or simply faked outright.
The current contributions, as large as they are, will not be enough to fund payouts at current levels after 2030. These kinds of assertions have a basis in politics, not reality, and most people tend to view them with skepticism anyway. What I'll call the seven deadly sins of statistical innumeracy are deadlier than outright lies, because even those who create and spread statistical nonsense tend to believe their data at least approximate the truth. This is the biggest sin of all, and by far the most common, because no one doing a study beyond the most trivial can sample everybody or everything, and only mind readers can be sure of what they've missed. Unless, of course, they missed things on purpose.