The subjectivity of facts
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:36 am by David FarrarThe Herald has a new column (I think just online but not sure) called “Just the facts” by Keith Ng.
Now I’m very supportive of any attempt by the media to fact check claims by politicians – or even to put them into context. And I think Keith generally has a good track record with checking the facts out.
But there is a danger on having just one person set up as “the fact checker”. Factcheck.org in the US had around a dozen staff. Because one’s personal political views can influence what facts you find relevant, what story you tell with facts. There is a reason people refer to “lies, damned lies and statistics”.
As an example, I’ll criticise below one of Keith’s fact checks – not to say I am right and Keith is wrong, but how the use or non use of certain facts can give different impressions:
“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high”.
JOHN KEY (STATE OF THE NATION SPEECH, JAN 29)That’s true, but
Okay the insignificant little detail that John Key is correct is given just two words. Wouldn’t it have been useful to provide the actual statistics on violent youth offending. Then people could judge how significant the increase is. Just two words supporting the fact he is correct, and several hundred words on trying to undermine his assertion.
violent old-people crime is at an all-time high, too. Violent crime for every age group over 13 is, technically, “at an all-time high”, and the fastest growing group of violent offenders is in the 51-99 category.
So the defence to the rise in violent youth crime, is that violent crime is up for all age groups. Okay well why not give us offending rates in say 2000 and 2007 for all age groups so people can see the absolute rates and the growth for each age group.
Boot camp for old people, anyone? Young people commit more violent crimes than people over 30, but the increase is happening across the board.
That looks like sarcasm, not facts. One can have an entire separate debate about “boot camps” – something along the lines of better to turn people away from crime when they are younger. And also the overwhelming support for the policy from experts in the youth offending area. But hey I’m getting away from the facts.
And again why not provide the facts for violent offending of under 30s and over 30s.
Youth crime as a whole is actually decreasing:
Could have been useful to mention that the overall reported crime figures are generally held to be relatively meaningless as they treat murdering someone the same as having a joint on you. One could do an entire article on why the overall crime rate is such a flawed measure – instead of using it as rebuttal to a true statement about violent youth crime offending.
As an alternative why not point out what areas of youth crime are increasing (violent and sexual I think) and what areas are decreasing?
2006 saw the lowest number of arrests for youth offending since 1995.
Now the context of the statement is a speech by the National Leader, criticising the current Govt’s policies. Why not compare 2006 to 1999 instead of the previous high of 1995?
When the change in population is taken into account, that’s a 17 per cent decrease over 10 years.
And how much took place from 1995 to 1999, and how much from 2000 to 2006? All facts which would be useful.
I could go through and apply a similar analysis to the other “Just the Facts” articles, but I won’t. The purpose isn’t to attack Keith (who I think is an excellent journalist), but to show that there are dangers in labelling any article as “Just the facts”. It all comes down to what is subjective choices as to which facts to include, whether or not to use absolute or relative data, what time frames to choose etc etc.
Tags: Fact Check, Keith Ng, Media, NZ Herald
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:04 am
With all due respect to Keith, he is after all a graduate of Russell Brown’s Blogs For Socialists apprenticeship scheme, and thus is similarly afflicted with a condition suffered my many left wing social liberals – the complete inability to stare a social problem in the face, particularly when such problems are often caused by decades of the same liberal ideology which they hold dear to themselves. So instead, we get denial, evasion, twisting & sarcasm. Leftism 101 stuff.
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 am
Yes Grant, you’re right. Keith is a very good writer, but giving him this position is akin to having H2 as fact checker at the Herald.
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 am
“And I think Keith generally has a good track record with checking the facts out.”
Far too charitable. (IMHO) He’s just another propagandising leftist stooge. Wouldn’t know a fact if he was choking on it.
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
Just as well he started fact checking AFTER your famous comparison of % increase in carbon emissions.
Vote:You wouldnt have had a leg to stand on, especially since forest clearing is given a arbitary value rather than calculating the real CO2 emitted as in cars or power stations
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
The one he did on Brownlee over the weekend was dead right. SHowed him out to be a grandstanding fool. However, what did anyone expect? He’s a politician competing for media space.
The real blowtorch should be aimed at those in the media who breathlessly report these ‘facts’ without first checking their provenance. If there is an improvement there, rather than a smug, complacent sneer at people like Gerry Brownlee, then I might be more impressed. Will Keith be brave enough to do that, even if it means dissing his own editoiral colleagues?
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
Unfortunately, there remain those on the left who believe “reality has a left wing bias.” If you start from this proposition, then there will be a lot of facts that you can find to support your argument. GWW, if you wanted to comment on the greenhouse gas thread, why didn’t you? No point in discussing it here now, is there.
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
heh. should be ‘just the whacks’
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
Well PaulL DPF said this here:
“lies, damned lies and statistics”
and this
It all comes down to what is subjective choices as to which facts to include, whether or not to use absolute or relative data, what time frames to choose etc etc.
Yet barely a month or two back DPF broke all the rules about using statistics and as well absolute or relative data…
Its no point trying to be the Pope when when you are the Madam of the brothel
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Was it Margaret Thatcher who said something like “The facts of life are conservative”…….?
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 am
When you have a socialist government, and a “conservative” opposition, which do you think should be subjected to the MOST “fact-checking”…….? COME ON.
And who would be most prone to playing fast and loose with the facts, moral relativists and leftists who think that their objective justifies any means, or conservatives?
P. J. O’Rourke once said something like this, that even the conservative hypocrite has this superiority over the “liberal”; he knows the difference between right and wrong.
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 11:54 am
On youth crime, most of it would be the petty stuff that goes unreported now that the plods are always too busy.
I saw a leaflet from the plods recently that told us that “studies have proven that INCREASED CERTAINTY OF DETECTION, IS A POWERFUL DETERRENT”…………but the leaflet was about breaking the speed limit………DOHHHHHH!
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
On increasing crime, overall, read THIS:
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.22252/pub_detail.asp
HERE IS AN EXCERPT:
“Most importantly, America has dealt with its crime problem. The crime rate has dropped by about one-third since the early 1990s. It has dropped even more in the better parts of town. People walk the streets of New York and Chicago without taking the precautions they used to take. Triple-locked doors and bars on the windows are not as necessary as they used to be. People feel safer and are safer.
We didn’t solve the crime problem by learning how to get tough on the causes of crime nor by rehabilitating criminals. We just took them off the streets. As of 2005, more than 2m Americans are incarcerated. That number is inefficiently large–it includes many minor drug offenders–but it responds to the question “Does prison work?”.
If you are willing to pay the price–a price that would amount to a British prison population of roughly 250,000 if your sentencing followed the American model–you can reduce crime dramatically.
All of these are policies that the British political establishment may come to accept in another decade or so. If London were to get a mayor who decided to take the homeless off the streets, scrub away the graffiti and adopt a zero-tolerance policing policy, I suspect he would find the same surge in popularity that Rudy Giuliani experienced in New York.
British parents are increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with schools, and especially with their spinelessness in dealing with disruptive children. In every area of life that the underclass affects, the public mood is shifting towards support of the American solution. Politicians who covet votes will come around eventually.
Hence my prediction that in 15 years, perhaps less, the underclass/Neet will no longer be a political issue in Britain and urban life for most of you will be more pleasant than it is now. The price will have been a great deal of money spent on prisons and, in effect, the writing-off of a portion of the population as unfit for civil society.
In the United States I have called this the coming of custodial democracy–literally custodial for criminals, figuratively custodial for the neighborhoods we seal away from the rest of us. Custodial democracy is probably headed your way.
It is not a happy solution. On the contrary, it means abandoning a central tenet of a free society–that everyone can exercise equal responsibility for his or her own life. But Britain, like the United States and western Europe, is locked into a welfare state that by its nature generates large numbers of feckless people. If we are unwilling to prevent an underclass by giving responsibility for behavior back to individuals, their families, and communities, custodial democracy is the only option left.”
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
But we don’t at all mind (or comment on) the subjectivity of the facts put forward in the Herald’s editorials, do we? Because that is usually a good “correct” right-favouring interpretation perhaps?
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Aye, David, I agree with you about putting up the raw stats and letting people decide for themselves. I’m still experimenting with the form and style, and putting up the basic stats is something I’ll do next time (when appropriate). I’m still tenderfooting about one of Stephen Hawkings’ theories on publishing: every formula you put to print decreases readership by 10%. I was worried that that extends to tables and graphs, too.
Make no apologies for the sarcasm, though.
And to defend that particular column, the first part was focusing on the fact that the increase in youth violent crime isn’t a part of a trend in youth crimes, but part of the trend in violent crimes. I should’ve emphasised that Clark brought into the same argument, too. Again – I wish I emphasised both those points, but it was the first one, and I’ll hopefully do better in the future. Note, however, that I did both when I posted it on Public Address.
Also, you didn’t mention the third part of the article! It noted the very sharp increase in violent crimes in 2005, when the new police database was put in place.
[DPF: Never apologise for sarcasm
. Fair point re formulas or tables but I don't think one can avoid them entirely. My post was intended as constructive criticism - I look forward to future articles. I did note the increase in violent crimes in 05, but also note that it was not an increase against a trend of decreases. There has been a pretty steady increase for seven years or so, and the 05 figures were a larger than normal increase but not against the trend. I also do recall the Yes Minister episode where Sir Humphrey can explain away any bad stat by claiming they have changed the way they measure it!]
Vote:March 3rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Oh, and it’s on the Herald on Sunday. On Sundays. It just gets put online at strange times.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
The report showed a 3% increase on previous year (for violent crimes) prior to the introduction of the system in July 2005, and 10% increase on previous year immediately after. There was no change in the comm centre traffic or ACC claims.
Vote: