When Numbers Lie: The bogus study is a staple of public relations, and Slate’s Jack Shafer does a fine job of dismantling a recent example of the genre, examining the claim by employee communications firm Challenger Grey & Christmas that companies will lose $3.8 billion in productivity as their employees goof off watching the NCAA tournament.
The survey was picked up widely, including coverage in major media such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, and the Washington Post, despite being built around an utterly spurious statistic. So, do we applaud the creativity of the bogus study, or do we bemoan its fundamental dishonesty?
The survey was picked up widely, including coverage in major media such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, and the Washington Post, despite being built around an utterly spurious statistic. So, do we applaud the creativity of the bogus study, or do we bemoan its fundamental dishonesty?
posted by Paul A. Holmes @ 1:58 AM
1 Comments:
At 1:53 PM,
Anonymous said…
In my workplace experience, the majority of people who participate in the NCAA office pools are men - so does this mean that to avoid this specious loss of productivity, we need to recruit more women into the workforce?
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