Abstract

Tribe, David All serious journalists and debaters garnish their opinion pieces with facts and figures seen as 'corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative' . This apology for a lurid pack of lies in The Mikado has long been compared with statistics. Of course it's unjust. Nevertheless, investigation shows that statistics, widely used to interpret the past and present and forecast the future, to determine or justify public policy, are often unsatisfactory through questionable processing of controversial, inadequate or bogus data