How to Hide Social Problems: Vagueness as a Propaganda Tool
By: Chester Davis
Tags: Propaganda, Science Literacy, Critical Thinking

Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash

Have strict gun laws made Great Britain safe? Is abstinence-only sex education a success? Is capitalism raping the planet? What is the solution for climate change, gun violence, or teen pregnancy? And what exactly is the problem? How do you know if you accomplished anything useful? You have to be clear and concrete, not vague and fuzzy. But, if you do that, you are undermining the efforts of lots of pundits, politicians, and borderline dishonest activists.

Each of these snarky questions has one key thing in common, one thing that scientists try hard to avoid. That one thing is vagueness. In science, you want to define your key terms in a way that allows for measurement. This is the exact opposite of vagueness, isn’t it? You can talk in terms of numbers or rates or trends. Vague terms like “safe” and “success” leave plenty of wiggle room for bashing or promoting a social policy.

How it Works

Let’s say organization X wants to dismantle the nation’s gun laws. They have many options. They could make the case that all gun laws violate the Second Amendment. They might also publicize the many ways that various gun control laws have failed.

They could argue that the 1994 assault weapons ban did nothing.

2. They could argue that gun crimes still happen.

3. They could argue that legal gun owners stop lots and lots of violent crimes.

There are so many problems with those arguments, one article can’t address them all. But, take the second claim, which is one you will actually find on the Web when gun control comes up.

Why would stricter gun laws, like that 1994 assaults weapons ban stop gun violence? This kind of fact-free assertion is supposed to undermine rational thought. Gun laws obviously don’t work because we still have gun crimes and mass shootings.

The organization could make a stronger case by arguing that gun laws were supposed to make us “safe”, something which can’t be done. China has gun crime. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Well, doesn’t that look bad for gun control advocates? They think gun laws are supposed to make us safe and stop gun violence. Neither of those statements is based on reality. People who aren’t used to speaking precisely, in a scientific way, might argue that banning handguns will make us “safe” but no serious-minded person would take that statement literally. No serious-minded person should listen to the opposite argument either, because it doesn’t represent a real effort to explain or understand.

How it Should Work

In a real study of a social problem, you want to start with something that can be measured. You want to make a prediction about how well a social program or law might work. But, isn’t “work” another kind of weasel word? Yes of course it is. In a serious talk about social problems or social policies, you want to be more specific.

If we want to know if a gun law really helped, we have to take several steps. First, what does “helped” mean? We need to define this term using numbers. Are we looking for a decline in overall violence, maybe? If so, we can express “helped” in many ways. Here are some examples:

Violent crime rates will be lower in five years.

The homicide rate will decline during the first 10 years the law is in effect.

The homicide rate will experience a statistically significant decline.

Those examples might not be perfect, from a social research perspective. But, if you want to understand the problem and the potential solutions, these are the statements that count. Vague claims about things no one can measure only create a fog of confusion and misdirection.

Hyperbole is another tool of the propagandist that makes it easy to hide or dismiss any relevant science. That subject will have to wait for another article.