Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics About Privacy Hysteria
It is frighteningly easy to dupe the public with statistics, since most journalists and readers aren’t trained in all the sophisticated ways pollsters can make subtle changes to research that make a gigantic difference in the outcome. Recently, a near-paranoid picture of the American public made its way around the media cycle, thanks to a “study” commissioned by TrustE, a web security company, on privacy. Since we know you want to be intelligent readers, and you can’t always depend on journalists to recognize a bad statistic, we thought we’d show you how to spot a misleading study using the report’s glaringly bad methodology. 1. Beware of really high or low percentages. A sizable chunk of the American electorate is shockingly ignorant. As of 2008, 30% still believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and 18% believe the sun revolves around the earth. Any truly representative survey will reflect uneducated respondents and therefore will have a buffer away from 100% and 0%,...