can statisticians be bought?

The simple, honest answer is this: If you are not at least semi-competent in statistical analysis (300+ level coursework), you don't really understand what you are looking at.

What is worse is this: We know all sorts of problems exist and why they exist, but we still can't really do anything about it.

For example, scientific journals prefer to publish new material. New findings are sexy. New findings sell, even to academics. It is almost impossible to get them to publish studies that result in outcomes rejecting previous findings. (Particularly because there will almost ALWAYS be these rejection findings ... even if the original data is good.)

We also know that a certain percentage of "positive" findings will be in error, even when everything is done correctly.

These two things together mean bad data gets published by legitimate scientific journals, without the aid of corporate conspiracy, and will by sheer inertia of the publication system pose a difficult target to displace.


The best, simple method to identify reliability in data is reproduction of the findings. Look for multiple studies, from different sources, that give essentially the same conclusion. This will still have flaws, but is really the best the average person is going to do.
 
Big Tobacco has murdered 250 million people. BT knew their product was addictive, caused cancer, caused heart disease, and caused arterial sclerosis, and emphysema. Yet they had slews of doctors and phds denying all of that and it worked for decades. These fuckers knew. They targeted children to replace the smokers they killed. Yet there were the experts denying everything. Paid by Big tobacco to deny everything. Why they even made safer light cigarettes.
What's about 100x worse is how gas companies promoted leaded gasoline as safe--and the government was their biggest champion for decades through several different administration.
 
Big Tobacco has murdered 250 million people. BT knew their product was addictive, caused cancer, caused heart disease, and caused arterial sclerosis, and emphysema. Yet they had slews of doctors and phds denying all of that and it worked for decades. These fuckers knew. They targeted children to replace the smokers they killed. Yet there were the experts denying everything. Paid by Big tobacco to deny everything. Why they even made safer light cigarettes.

The Nazi's did the first research showing a link between tobacco and multiple health problems and instituted the first anti-tobacco campaign.

So according to liberal logic cigarettes are good.
 
we easily trust the results of studies conducted by universities or scientists/ but what are the chances that there people can be bought by a company or government so the results are swayed in their favor?

Universities are pimps; scholars are whores, and the payments are in grants and endowments.
 
There are those who try to conflate the scientific method with the scientific community in order to label one "anti-science" if they dare question the conclusions of a particular group of paid scientists.
 
The Nazi's did the first research showing a link between tobacco and multiple health problems and instituted the first anti-tobacco campaign.

So according to liberal logic cigarettes are good.

So according to your logic gun control was an idea ahead of its time and one that should be emulated. Glad to hear it.
 
So according to your logic gun control was an idea ahead of its time and one that should be emulated. Glad to hear it.

The Nazi's were also for gun control, and so are liberals. I don't think that is a coincidence.
 
These threads are never serious, just excuses to be mad at smarter people. Yes, you can buy off some statisticians, no, it's not hard to spot if you are willing to get an education and can think critically, yes, misleading statistics work because people are gullible and uneducated, no, that doesn't mean the entire enterprise is corrupt, and yes, corporations and PACs are most responsible for pushing misleading stats that impact our lives negatively.

Stats work really, really well on the "anti-stat" rubes too.
 
we easily trust the results of studies conducted by universities or scientists/ but what are the chances that there people can be bought by a company or government so the results are swayed in their favor?
The chances are as likely as any other person.

Scientists and statisticians are human.

Humans respond to incentive.

A scientist or statistician has just as much chance of being bribed, or corrupted as any other person.
 
Trump had a 2% chance of winning the election the night of the election
 
we easily trust the results of studies conducted by universities or scientists/ but what are the chances that there people can be bought by a company or government so the results are swayed in their favor?

Universities and scientists need grants/funding. They too can be bought. Statisticians cannot be any different.
 
Wouldn't be unprecedented. Do people really trust Chinese or Russian statistics? There can be a very large motive to fudge numbers. Similar to cooking the books in the financial world.

So from both a state and corporate perspective this is very tempting. To what degree it can it be done without too much blow back is difficult to determine though.

Often it is better to just cherry pick statistics and use them to draw a distorted picture, rather than fudge them outright.

Probably only accurate statistics is about height, boob and dick size and concretente things done by sources everywhere and componies. How much % people work or what % of immigrant is illegal or whatever also probably all lied by government. Governments migto want to lie about certain population within they borders or lie about economic. Same with crime stats and so on or stats of benefit of some project.
 
we easily trust the results of studies conducted by universities or scientists/ but what are the chances that there people can be bought by a company or government so the results are swayed in their favor?

This is literally what the scientific method is designed to weed out. There are peer reviewed studies. Plus, models usually need to be duplicated in order to be verified.
 
we easily trust the results of studies conducted by universities or scientists/ but what are the chances that there people can be bought by a company or government so the results are swayed in their favor?

To answer your question directly, yes there have been instances of clear cut scientific fraud. For what it's worth, it is also recognized that research outcomes more often produce results that favor the sponser, although this is due to many factors, not just outright fraud.

Overall, I would imagine overt conscious manipulation of research is rare. Instead, researchers suffer from various biases which contribute to biased outcomes and interpretations, and then interested parties may manipulate findings further to fit an agenda.

For relevant info, google "reproducibility crisis" "funding bias" "research biases" "file drawer effect." In short, these issues plaguing science are recently gaining more attention, and so far it is looking like a significant portion of "established" research is being shown to be flawed.
 
so why are we still blindly trusting statistics and scientists, when its uncertain if they can be credible sources

Because on average, it's still the most efficient way of getting accurate information more often than fake or false information.
I think most people agree that "even" after spending ~5-6 years at university, there are still plenty of topics in your own discipline you don't have a strong opinion on or can't call yourself an expert, not by any stretch. I can still read plenty of recently published papers and notice that I hardly understand anything and have to read up on other things first etc. That's sort of humbling and should give you an idea of how clueless you're about topics you didn't study for years imo. So there are obvious limits to 'oh I look into it myself and form a rational opinion blah blah'.
And of course not every 'appeal to authority' is by default fallacious. If you know that somebody spent a lot of time studying something and you further know that other experts who also spent a lot of time studying the same subject and aren't associated with him mostly agree to his statements, and you can at least verify that he made his methodology and datasets available to others, it's still the most rational decision to assume he's right.
 
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The bottom left even say those figures were certified.

Thats not even necessarily untrue. They might be "less" "irritating".

Less could be .001%. Irritating could mean anything. Statistics are rarely fake, they are just used in misleading ways.
 
Honestly, who trusts polls anymore?

Who trusts "studies" done by these universities which hire unironic communists, and teach courses on beyonce?



I get your point, but you even asking the question, basically answers it. No.

You know studies and polls arent the same thing right?
 
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