Our Threatened Freedom

Can We Trust Statistics

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 53-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 053

Dictation Name: Vol. E - Part 01 – Can We Trust Statistics

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Can we trust statistics? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Can we trust the statistics issued by Washington D.C. and its federal agencies? Some years ago, I knew a very successful corporation executive who told me that an important aspect of his success was his distrust of all federal statistics. Since his success depended on knowing what happened in his own field, he had men compiling data for him.

Too many of us have been brought up to believe, naively, in the validity of statistics. The problem with that is statistics maybe both accurate and misleading at one and the same time.

For example, it can be demonstrated that a higher percentage of people who check into hospitals will die, than those who walk into bars. Does it follow, then, that hospitals are a more dangerous place than bars? Now that example is an obvious one. Let us consider another, not quite as obvious. A few years back, an article set forth statistics which supposedly proved that all adoptions through state agencies were far more successful and problem free, than adoptions through all private agencies combined. These statistics showed a high ratio of serious problems developing among private agencies. However, on closer examination, the statistics, while accurate, were giving us a false and prejudice picture of adoption agencies. The statisticians had classified adoptions sponsored by church agencies together with illegal and criminal controlled adoptions.

What they had avoided doing was to compare, say, church sponsored adoptions with state sponsored adoptions. Using the same data, if we compared all church sponsored adoptions against all others, that is, statist and criminal, clearly the church agencies would come out far ahead. Again, the statistics would be accurate, but the conclusion would again be misleading. In other words, given a collection of statistics, how we classify and arrange them will determine what conclusion we get.

Now our biggest and most impressive statistics gathering agency is the federal government. Every federal agency, virtually, regards statistics as an important tool for making a case for its own worth, for claiming more powers, and for demanding more money. Not only do these agencies collect statistics to promote their own welfare, but they also create supposedly independent fact finding agencies to provide them with more statistics to use on Congress and the people. Thus, a key purpose of statistics to increase the credibility and the power of the bureaucracy, at the cost of our freedom as a people.

One important way of defending our liberties is to distrust these federal statisticians. They have an axe to grind, and they are using it against us.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.