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First, I would like to say that the infographic is from April 2011, and the 112th Congress convened in January of 2011, so this graphic should reflect the current group.There are 435 seats in the House and 100 in the Senate. Two of the house seats are currently vacant, so all the numbers on the graphic should add up to 533. However, if you add the number of men they say are in Congress (448) and the number of women (91) you get 539. According to the Senate's own publication, there are 91 women (in the Senate and House), so they got that right, but somehow managed to subtract 91 from 533 incorrectly, in a way that helps make their point. And then, to even further screw up their chances at credibility, they suggest that the demographically representative number would be to have 218 women and 218 men - which adds up to 436, 103 fewer people than the total on the left side.
There are many more inaccuracies I discovered, but the important part is that this source was just flat out lying, in an incredibly obvious way. Yet it took me some time to realize it, and I can easily see myself completely missing it if that one stat hadn't caught my eye. Although I expect bias and inaccuracy in statistics or analysis, and especially the internet, I was rather shocked to find such blatant numerical contradictions within one source, and I expect raw data to lie to me - because I figure that people would catch that almost immediately so no one would bother trying to lie. But I was obviously wrong, and will now be looking at information with an even more skeptical eye.
I'm not sure, though, how effective this blatant lying would be. Were creators of this just extremely incompetent? Or were their glaring errors still subtle enough that most people would take the information as true? Also, how badly were they lying? All the demographic groups they said were under or overrepresented are in fact under or overrepresented, just in many cases not as much as they said. Because no one will actually remember the specific numbers used, was their exaggeration in some ways less bad than it could have been because it did show a correct point?
While I certainly see this sort of thing happening, I don't believe that this particular example of false data is a result of deliberate tampering with the information. First of all, the deal with 218 men and women not adding up to 533 doesn't help any side of this argument; had it been 262(.5) and 262(.5), the argument wouldn't have been strengthened (or weakened), and the statistical error with 6 more men than in reality is too small to infer that it was purposeful, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, what you are describing occurs on a widespread and very deep level. For instance, a large part of the reason the economy is currently the way it is is because of credit rating agencies giving toxic assets (usually mortgages that were bought by people who couldn't really afford them at low interest rates and no down payment) AAA ratings, simply so that they would be used more by the mortgage companies. While that's a less obvious example, it still illustrates the point.