Weaponizing statistics

Someone asked me this week how the Democrats can say that President Trump presided over the worst economy in the U.S. since Herbert Hoover and how Trump can say he presided over the greatest economy in the U.S. ever.

Of course, people can say anything - particularly the former president - but if they want to buttress their claims with data - there are tried and tested ways.

If you don’t like the annual data, use monthly data. If you don’t like the overall GDP data, use GDP per capita data. Tweak the start and end times in your dataset to find the window that looks the best. If you don’t like ‘real’ data, use nominal data. If you don’t like the comparison to the previous government - compare laterally to other jurisdictions.

Of, if you can’t find any data points that work, then just say what a former PC Cabinet Member said - “we don’t compare ourselves to other jurisdictions”.

In that case, you have to rely on hyperbole and big smiles.

Jacques Poitras used to have me speak to his journalism students about government use of data. The provincial government figured out how to make story development really easy for journalists. In the press releases announcing a new initiative or other important announcement, the spinners at GNB would put a number of pertinent facts in the press release and even a few choice quotes that could be easily dropped into a story. In fact, the goal was to allow the journalist to essentially just rewrite the press release and, presto, your story. Good journalism still means going well beyond the info provided in a press release.

I have argued for years that governments should have a standard set of data that tracks progress - on pick your issue - and don’t waver. Serve up the data good or bad. If good, take credit. If bad, tell us how you are going to fix it.

But, of course, that is really, really hard. How can government in particular - beat itself over the head?

In my time, the first example in New Brunswick of an economic and demographic report card was the Lord government. They were going to report on a series of data points related to the Prosperity Plan. The first one came out. Then the second. Then I started to notice some of the more negative data points were not being published and the last one was basically just a few handpicked stats that showed the government in a good light.

It’s probably too much to ask politicians to track their progress in an objective fashion.

Maybe someone outside government should. I liked what Herb Emery was doing with BoostNB but I’m not sure the data is being updated. The NB Health Council crunches a ton of data and publishes really good reports on the health system and outcomes but it is funded by government so….

In the end, the public has a right to be skeptical. They can go to a right leaning media outlet and get one set of ‘facts’ or turn to the left and get another. This is because journos can do the same thing - pick data points that validate the story theme.

Unfortunately, there are no good answers to this dilemma. I suggest you find a few experts you trust and use them as your go to.