Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

When Numbers Replace Wisdom & Common Sense.

Fifty years ago , when I was working as an operational research consultant for a major industrial corporation, I was modelling the growth of electricity demand with an IT colleague because the company couldn’t rely on the official forecasts from the electricity companies.

It was a great piece of statistical modelling, taking into account every user and industrial sector development, but soon we realised that the electricity demand was following the growth of the economy. The company’s computer filled a large room, data was input with punch-cards and great sheets of paper printed out the results. Because we soon realized that the forecasts were so dependent on the UK economic growth forecasts, I arranged an appointment with a senior statistician at the Government’s National Statistics Department.

What a shock I had when this expert statistician and computer modeller told me, in his opinion economic growth was not dependent on labour, investment, capital, world market forces or any other usual measures, but primarily on the “spirit of the nation”. He then gave me the example of post war Britain’s growth versus that of Germany. We had won the war and everyone expected an easier life and the benefits normally gained by victors in war but the Germans had been destroyed and every man woman and child had to rebuild their lives from scratch. Hence the high-growth rate in Germany compared with our poor progress in Great Britain post-war. I left this interview much wiser and have, ever since, had severe reservations about any forecasts that leave out the human “X” factor.

Unfortunately, the world has moved on, we are now increasingly dependent on IT, computer modelling, algorithms and statistics and less and less on experience, wisdom and common-sense. So today we are witnessing a world thrown into chaos and crisis not entirely because of a new virus. This virus is very much like others in the past decades and like any virus it has its own unique character in the way of invading its host. No! What is different is the way that almost every government throughout the world has been driven by the science, by advice from the most prestigious organisations like the World Health Organisation and by leading epidemiologists using statistical algorithms of the way the virus spreads, by others forecasting the meltdown of our health systems and by most of the population driven by fear during this crisis, relying evermore on directives and protection by their governments.

Governments have likewise been forced to take decisions primarily based on the computer models of statisticians and epidemiologists and have feared to ignore these forecast at their peril, possibly losing credibility and support of the people. There are other possible reasons for the way this particular epidemic has grown into a major economic and health pandemic associated with global commercial forces, but I leave others to discuss what these may be. HERE 

In ancient times the forecasters or soothsayers came from a different priesthood who would study the entrails of slaughtered animals sacrificed in a religious ceremony to give guidance to the politicians. Their politicians balanced this knowledge of the expert seers with their own experience and wisdom before deciding policy. Today we are more civilised and have far more sophisticated scientific methods to guide our politicians, but are we any wiser?

To quote Lord Horder “ ..health does not necessarily depend upon Science at all. There were millions of healthy persons living before Science, as we understand it today, existed. 

“Nature taught man how to be healthy long before Science discovered the laws of health.” 

“ Direct action, force, suppression of individual freedom of choice and remedies directed towards the masses do not produce results that have any permanence.”