Intellectuals have some very bad incentives according to renowned economist Thomas Sowell. He defines an intellectual as someone’s who’s end product are ideas (i.e. not an engineer, scientist, medical doctor, etc.). While admitting that he himself is an intellectual, he condemns that lunacy that pervades the intellectual community. The problem is there are no checks on their ideas. If an engineer builds a bridge and it collapses, that engineer has failed. However, if an intellectual pushes for certain policies that turn out to be disastrously wrong, they rarely face any ramifications for this whatsoever.

Statistics are often seen as infallible, though. Unfortunately, the truth is statistics are often very difficult to gather and compute in a methodologically sound way. Furthermore, there are a host of reasons a particular group may want to fudge these numbers. If anything, I hope this series will shine some light on how statistics can be flawed, and perhaps raise some healthy skepticism.