Distrust of Statistics

Distruct means disbelief of lack of faith. Thus distrust of statistics refers to disbelief or lack of confidence in statistics by the people coming across it. Ordinarily, distrust on any thing arises when one is deceived by that thing on account of the differences found between its promises and performances.

Statistics, as we discussed above is concerned with figures and methods of dealing with those figures. Figures, as we know, are innocent and are liable to be misused. Similarly, the various statistical methods are tools like knives or sticks. They are also liable to be misused if they fall in the hands of ignorant and unscrupulous persons just as the knives and sticks are misused by the mads or decoits, As such, statistics is very much liable to be misused and misinterpreted and to produce fallacious conclusions. In view of this paradoxical liability of the science of statistics, people of ordinary prudence, without going to the root of the causes, have started distrusting and condemning the science of statistics with certain caustic remarks as follows:

(i)          “Statics is a tissue of falsehood.”

(ii)         “An ounce of truth can produce tones of statistics.”

(iii)        “Statistics are lies of the first order.”

(iv)       “Statics can prove anything.”

(v)        “Statistics can prove nothing.”

(vi)      “Figures do not lie, liars figure.”

(vii)     “Statistics is an unreliable science.”

(viii)    “There are three types of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics, wicked in the order of their naming and so on.”

(ix)      “If figures say so it can not be otherwise.”