The fake news is a phenomenon which exist in media for a long time, and its main purpose is to mislead people for financial or political benefit. In many cases, fake news use statistics for argumentation for their misinformation. We can consider the misleading statistics as a subcategory of fake news, as it uses numbers, tests, and data analysis to meet the expected conclusions and persuasion of people to support the stated point of view. The recent example with vaccination against Covid-19 and its misleading statistical information about harmful effects of vaccines, causes severe problems with vaccination of the population. Indeed, the misleading statistics cause a problems for the media users, and that is why my blog were created to discuss and identify that issue. I suggest that the topic of misleading statistics is an important topic in the media, and everyone should be aware of it. This essay-post will discuss my view on a misleading statistics as a huge threat for the people.
The statistics are the useful tool for analysis, making the conclusions, presenting the information, and argumentation to prove some claims. It uses different quantitative and qualitative data for research, and lots of methods or analyses to state or to prove the conclusions. However, the statistics could be the misleading, and sometimes they are presented to show the argumentation under claims and convince people to believe in that. I suggest that for clear understanding of term of misleading statistics, Ron Shevlin clearly identified a clear understanding of it. He presented a new term for misleading statistics as "Quantipulation" and described this as "the art of using unverifiable (or hard to verify) math and statistics to convince people of what you want them to believe". Also, he indicated that this word could be used in a marketing, and, often, in political context (Shevlin, 2020). Quantipulation uses different methods of how to influence the audience from the perspective of receiving, accepting, and comprehending information. Masi (2019) stated various methods of persuasion as false correlation, falsely-established causation, confirmation bias, manipulation of graphs, testing many hypotheses, and cherry-picking data. Additionally, it is important to understand the Simpson's paradox, as aggregated datasets show a reverse trend than the original one when they were separately presented (Carlson, 2021). All of these methods and practices are important to understand within the subject of misleading statistics. Indeed, they are used in the fields of media, and one of the consequences is misleading statistics in vaccine hesitancy towards the vaccination against Covid-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic had a huge impact on our daily life, as the disease was unknown and people were living in the uncertainty about current situation. The scientists started to work on the vaccine to combat the virus, and modern and new technologies were use to advance in development of vaccine which resulted in creation of vaccine against the virus. However, the main problem there was to vaccinate people for the purpose stopping the infection, and the main target was to vaccinate around 60-70 percent of population to reach the so-called collective immunity, to prevent the spread of disease among the population. However, the new vaccines were met with rejection and hesitancy among the large group of population. The reasons behind that hesitancy and rejection is relied upon the arguments of people. Statista (2020) in their research outlined the reasons behind the willingness to vaccination. They are concerns about the side effects and safety of the vaccines, plan to see if it is safe and may get it later, do not trust the government, concerns about the quick vaccine development, do no like vaccines, plan to use masks/other precautions instead, not a member of any risk group that is a high risk, the vaccine could give me covid-19, covid-19 in not a serious illness and other factors. These reasons are presented among the U.S. population, and these reasons are their stated opinion about the issue. However, the misleading statistics about Covid-19 plays as a Confirmation bias to support their reasons for not getting vaccinated. Confirmation bias is "the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one's existing beliefs" (Britannica, 2021), and it is approached both by researchers (Maiz, 2019) and audience (Giridharan, 2021). From the researchers' perspective, they try to change and adapt the data and methodology using above-mentioned methods to meet the expected results, while from the readers' perspective, the information that support arguments behind their reason of not to get vaccinate plays as a confirmation of their own beliefs. Therefore, the people has a vaccine hesitance, and they share their point of view to find supporters, or, in some cases, to do something "good" based on their own beliefs. That is why media and misinformation, as well as misleading statistics plays different roles on vaccination: as a good and trustworthy source of information about all of the vaccination aspects, and as a stopping factor for full vaccination. Rendall (2021) indicated that one of the important factors that benefit the vaccine hesitancy in misinformation and media. Therefore, I think that misleading statistics play a crucial role in media, and in case of covid-19 and any other similar cases, as a threat for people.
To conclude, the statistics are a very useful tool for analysis, however, it could be used in the wrong hands. The misleading statistics are used to manipulate people to believe something by using maths and statistics, and it uses variety of methods. The case with Covid-19 is the example of huge threat made by misleading statistics, as it uses numbers to support different opinions about the unsafety or irrelevance of Covid-19 and vaccines against it. Also, these arguments act on confirmation bias of people regarding the vaccination, and that is why it is one of the factors that stops the vaccination. Based on these case, I believe that misleading statistics are a huge threat for people, and it sometimes play the same role in other similar situations.
References.
Shevlin, R. (2020). Don't trust those numbers: how marketers and politicians abuse statistics. Forbes. www.forbes.com
Masi, F. M. (2019). Analysis of misleading statistics. The International Journal, 2(1). www.researchgate.net
Carlson, B.W. (2021). Simpson's paradox. Brittanica. www.britannica.com
Statista (2020). Percentage of U.S. adults who stated they are not likely to get a Covid-19 vaccination who gave select reasons for their decisions as of December 2020. Statista. www.statista.com
Casad, B. J. (2021). Confirmation bias. Britannica. www.britannica.com
Rendall, J. (2021). Covid vaccine hesitancy: why people don't want the shot. CNET Wellness. www.cnet.com
Giridharan, A. (2021). How the media uses data to mislead you. All Sides. www.allsides.com
"Fake" statistics/news/ideas in the media is something people have thought about at least once in their life, the fear of not knowing what could be trusted and what cannot be can be a force that influences our decision making proccess, without a doubt there will always be a part of society that will believe this fake information and some part will either try to understand why that has been done, the truth behind this and the actual information that has been altered. Statistics is a hufe influence force, the example on Covid19 is the one we can somehow all relate. Very intriguing topic of misleading statistics for any reader from my point of view, very well done!
ReplyDeleteHey,Artem! Fake news and false statistics are the scourge of modern society, especially in such difficult times when the world is suffering from a global pandemic, when thousands of people die around the world every day and the only salvation is a vaccine, which the government manipulates in every possible way and uses all sorts of "tricks" to motivate the population to get vaccinated. But what I like about the media space is that it plays a huge role in the life of society, but also controls it. After all, as Jim Morrison said, "Whoever controls the media controls the mind"
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