LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS

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FREAKONOMICS
by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
released: 2005
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It was Mark Twain who popularized the aphorism of Benjamin Disraeli that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. I kept hearing all these marvelous things about FREAKONOMICS, a book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, so when I ran across it at 25% off, I did a stupid freakin’ thing and bought it. I thought: What the freak, I’ve got a pretty inquisitive mind and I’m open to seeing things differently, to discovering new viewpoints.
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The doubt started early when I got the book home and I first noticed the glowing comments on the dust jacket from the likes of Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. When all of the Liberal news agencies are lining up to tell me how wondrous a certain publication is, I’m immediately going to be freakin’ suspicious. 
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Author Malcolm Gladwell tells us on the cover, “Prepare to be dazzled”. Well, evidently Ol’ Malcolm is dazzled a whole lot easier than I am. (I won’t even mention the smug mug of Stephen Dubner that taunted me from the book’s dust jacket because I don’t want you to get the idea that I judge a book by its cover. Or in this case, a writer by his physiognomy. So I won’t mention that.)
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If you’re the kind of person who is amazed to learn that 70% of auto accidents occur within 10 miles of a driver’s home, then you just MIGHT be dazzled by FREAKONOMICS. If I tell you that the company that issues its 5-day-a-week employees only 3 uniform shirts, thinking that it is cutting costs, is probably increasing its overhead, and this fact astounds you -- if you must ask “But how?” -- then, yes, buy FREAKONOMICS and be dazzled! 
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Mostly what FREAKONOMICS offers (when its conclusions can be trusted) is just what we used to call “common sense.” But since America has been reduced to a bunch of corpulent, brain-dead zombies staring vacuously at that glowing box of SURVIVORS, and AMERICAN IDOLS, and LOST knuckleheads, good old-fashioned common sense now appears to dazzle the dead (when you can sever them from that glowing box and put a real book in their hands, that is).
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I dove into FREAKONOMICS hoping to find my purchase worthwhile. I got no further than page 13 when my fears were realized: everything would require second-guessing and verifying. On that page, Smug Mug tells us (based on a single report by the Institute Of Medicine) that “drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health.” Fortunately, I read YOUR BODY’S MANY CRIES FOR WATER by Doctor F. Batmanghelidj over a decade ago, so I already knew what a bunch of bunk that was.
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In chapter 4, Smug Mug “proves” that legalizing abortion in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision was responsible for a national drop in the crime rate. This represents the centerpiece of his book, both literally and ideologically. The first thing the reader must accept is that there really has been a significant drop in crime since the early 1990s. 
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On page 92, the author acknowledges that the police in Atlanta were discovered to be under-reporting crime in the early ‘90s in hopes of landing the 1996 Olympics. Well, would police forces nationally have an incentive to under-report crime generally if it has actually dramatically increased since the ‘90s as predicted? True, being honest might be means to an increased budget, but it sure would make your department appear inept and unable to maintain control. And surely the Chamber Of Commerce and the big business interests would frown on that public perception. Let me ask, do YOU actually feel you’re less likely to be the victim of a crime now than you did in the early 1990s? That’s funny, me neither. There’s so much crime now that some of what was once reported to the police agencies goes unreported, and recently, an ex-police officer friend told me that cops can no longer engage in some of the micro-policing they were able to do in the ‘80s and ‘90s because crime is so out-of-control now.
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In dismissing other possible factors responsible for the huge drop in crime (if this claim is a verity), Dubner states that increased police personnel accounts for only 10% of the drop. Having a bit more insight into the nature of police work than does the average civilian, it’s funny that I find myself even contending with the stats Smug Mug uses that actually WORK AGAINST his theory: I believe the wide-scale hiring of police officers since the early ‘90s could have impacted the crime rate only minimally -- less than the 10% -- while actually increasing the municipal coffers via traffic citations significantly. And Dubner concludes that right-to-carry firearm laws “simply don’t bring down crime”. (Be sure to read the utterly fascinating book GUNFIGHTERS, HIGHWAYMEN & VIGILANTES by Roger D. McGrath, for a decidedly different and scholarly viewpoint!)
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In dismissing all explanations for the unexpected drop in crime except legalized abortion, I didn’t notice any mention of the tremendous increase in homeschooling and the proliferation of private schools since the early ‘90s, and I wonder if that might have some statistical bearing. Ya think? Yes, I think Smug Mug is selective. He calls some abortions a “crude and drastic sort of insurance policy”. Not “immoral.” Not “sinful.” But then I didn’t expect Smug Mug to call a sin a sin.
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And even if Levitt and Dubner’s hypothesis is correct, that abortions have lowered crime, the fact remains that not every aborted child would have eventually murdered an innocent person, but every aborted child was an innocent person murdered. So why are we even discussing this? I’ll tell you why... Because the Pro-Choice folks can feel a slightly shifting consensus, and now they’re pulling out all the stops, trying to “statistically” convince the masses that they’re safer with all those unborn potential criminals missing. I find this repulsive! (And there are studies indicating that those missing people have, and will continue to have, a massively negative economic impact on society.)
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I won’t even go into chapter 5, 'What Makes A Perfect Parent?' Suffice to say that as usual (surprise! surprise!) all the statistics Dubner employs nearly always seem to confirm the rightness of the Liberal dogma on each issue. Funny how those crunched numbers always crunch conservative beliefs. Just know that if you’re a working mother, you haven’t cheated your child in the least, but if you’re a dad who thinks that an occasional spanking is in order, you are “unenlightened”.  If your kid is watching lots of TV, it isn’t turning the “child’s brain to mush”. (No word on whether or not it’s turning his/her morals to mush though.) And the studies (that we are called to pay attention to) show “that a child’s character wasn’t much affected whether or not he was sent to day care, whether he had one parent or two, whether his mother worked or didn’t, whether he had two mommies or two daddies or one of each.” (I’ve often wondered what might have happened to me if my Mom, who was home most of the time, hadn’t been there to hammer the dangers of drugs into my head day after day, year after year, while I was growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s.)
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I’ve given FREAKONOMICS two stars because I did find the section on the naming of children very interesting, as well as the story of Stetson Kennedy’s fight against the “three Ks”. But if you’re smarter than I am, you’ll borrow this book from your library rather than paying money for it. Economically speaking, that’s just "common cents".
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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