Women's Collection from Marketing to Counter-Marketing
VII. Overprecise and Unknowable Figures; [and] VIII. Semi-Attached Figures
Abstract
Contains draft chapters from Huff: "VII. Overprecise and Unknowable Figures" and "VIII. Semi-Attached Figures". Defines "overprecise and unknowable figures" as "any conclusion based on faulty or incomplete information or upon an inference of causality where none has been demonstrated". References summary statistics on smoking and health as exemplifying concept. Defines "semi-attached figure" as a concept in which conclusions do not directly follow from the available data. Critiques animal smoke inhalation studies in terms of their applicability to human smoking situations. Quotes from published studies and popular culture, and uses didactic methods. Relates to Bates 2025037587 (see "Document Quotes" field for excerpts and Bates 1005087402).
Fields
- Quotes
Remarks "[i]t is not difficult to combine an estimate or assumption with an arbitrarily chosen method of calculation to produce any conclusion wanted".
"Inconsistent reporting at the source often produces medical statistics of the kind that might be called semi-attached." (from Bates 2025037423).
Observes "[m]uch of the alarm about lung cancer has been produced less by recorded cases or deaths than by extrapolations to a decade or two in the future."
- Type
- Article
- Position Statement
- Author
- Huff, D.
- Named Person
- Auerbach, O. Dr.
- Brothers, J. Dr.
- Engel, L.
- Ferguson, G.R. Dr.
- Finkelstein, H. Dr.
- Flick, J.B.
- Fuchs, V.R. Dr.
- Garland, L.E. Dr.
- Garvin, C.A. Dr.
- Kennedy, R.F.
- Kinsey
- Lincoln, A. Pres.
- Marx, K.
- Moncrieff, R.W.
- Pauling, L.
- Porter, S.
- Reichmann, W.J.
- Seligman, Robert B. (PM VP of R&D c. 1976-82)Vice President of Research and Development at Philip Morris Richmond, VA 1976-1982. Reported to Senior Vice President of Operations. In 1982 transferred to tobacco technology group. Wanted to share ammonia and other tobacco technology with PM International companies.
- Taylor, H.C.
- Twain, M.
- Wagner, R.F.
- Ward, A.
- Named Organization
- American Cancer Society
- American Petroleum Industries Committee
- Atlantic Monthly Magazine
- Attorney General
- British Ministry of Works
- Bureau of the Census
- California State Senate
- Citizens Committee to Keep New York Clean
- Colliers Magazine
- Delaware Medical Journal
- Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service
- Engineering and Science Magazine
- Federal Bureau of Narcotics
- Fortune Magazine
- Geigy Agricultural Chemicals
- Harpers Magazine
- Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey
- Mattachine Society
- National Board of Fire Underwriters
- National Bureau of Economic Research
- National Safety Council
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Russell Sage Foundation
- San Francisco Examiner
- Sanford University School of Medicine
- Surgeon General
- Surgeon Generals Advisory Committee
- This Week Magazine
- Time Magazine
- True Story Magazine
- University of California
- US Dept of Agriculture
- Yale University
- Region
- United Kingdom
- United States
Document Images
:ii ~ overprecision
campus was labeled a center for deviates on the basis
nothing more than assumption that it was precisely
as
homosexual as the nation as a whole. All meaning is
~ d ef e at edhere ~~. ~ ..... ~%~'~' ~ ~ "~
this ex~ple we have be~n to move from the
of the impossibly precise to tha~ of the ~-
knowable statistic--~nowabl~ for now and possibly
Such a statistic is overprecise even when it
~'~:is a ro~d n~ber, because even the roundest of n~bers
Is far more specific th~ the information behind many of
those that we meet. ~~ ~ -
The unknowable statistic is ~icely exemplified by
an offering from Dr ~oyce Brothers (in This Week
magazine,
1958) that "the ~erican girl kisses an average
October,
~"-:.~i ef seven~-nine men before getting marrie~. "
A~ fig~e that can be derived o~ly from ~swers to
highly personal questions probably belongs in the ~ow-
able category. How often people brush their teeth is one
of these ~d so, oddly enough, is which magazines they
read. It was discovered long ago tha~ studies of magazine
readership based on questionnaires or on house-to-house
interviews show a remarkable preponderance of ~he more
respectable publications. Replies obtained from asking
people what magazines are read in their households would
suggest a circulation for The Atlantic Nonthl.v far in
.~ excess of wha~ the publisher tells us it is; and for
•
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True Story, far less. To get a reasonably accurate
, it has~on occasion been found necessary for
.~rs to pose as purchasers of old magazines instead
thus creating an opportunity to make an actual count. ';~ ..... ~~~
The British Ministry of Works surveyed "6~ ,000 repre-
sentatlve British homes" and reported that, In England ~-~_-.~i~
anyway, men bathe more often than women~ The weekly
uencies, were 1.7 times for men and 1.5 for women during .-:~.
winter months, and 2.1 and 2.0 in the s~mmer. The .....
are impressively precise and the sample reasonably
large. But what the Ministry really found out, of course,
i~i"was not how often people bathe but how often they say ;::%
they bathe. ;~ ~
Anyone inclined, to think ~hat the one is really the
~.!.;.;~f~;/...;;'.i.~.{~;.."s e as the other or that similarly obtained figures on
" "
,~.~ . '
_- ....~.~.~
-'tooth care or smoking habits are to be trusted~ should .:/.
;-:~:~/-~., ex~ine one t~ical survey of .magazine
readership. Under-
taken in 19~, it was reported in Time magazine for April ~
Some h~eds of New Yorkers were shown a list of
magazines ~d asked to n~e those they read regularly.
,~
Nine percent said that they currently read Collier s.
And 7 per cent said that if they could read only one
-~ "~~:)~. .-
magazine on the list, they would choose Collier's.
-
This s~vey was made more than seven years after the Janu~y "
day In 1957 when Collier's ceased publishing.
"Bo~s statistics remain In circulation, the med. .
cal writer Leonard Engel has pointed out, "because we
overprecision .'_ .~ ..: ~
a low index of suspicion for improbable figures-~ :,
~'and because we have none better."
About the only thing that man safely be said of ~
generally Used statistics on unknowable things is
they are probably enormously exaggerated. Under'~
statements somehow are very rare. -~
!YOne of the examples Engel suggests in his Harper's
article is "the figure of 250,000 often given for the .:~j.
of multiple sclerosis cases; death data indicate
there can be, happily, no more than ~hirty to forty
~and cases of this paralytic disease in the country."
and then another when you get tothe sixth--but after
all, you may just be seeing the same rat three times."
In Fortune magazine, November, 1961, D~uiel
Seligman describes his attempts to substantiate a
figure on moth damage. A manufacturer of cedar chests
. ~'-. had; offered, in an adve2tising folder, th.e fairly pre-
F. -i .... cise information that "Each year moths destroy $400 million.
-~so Ise~no~ e~$ o$ ~u!pual ~o £e~ ~slndod eu0
Xlq~ouo$9o 9u~ oo!oo~d ~IOAI$~IO~ ~ 9~ 9~o~
un~aq p~ $~ud~ -9$oo~qn9 ~aq$o pu~ l~o~p~ ~u~ o9 uo
po~u99o~d 9~am~T~ Olq~omgm oq$ se~cL~ ~! ROT~ o~
15 - overprecision
how in each of the following examples a percentage
given although there are no data of any such degree~
of preclsion'-and how the use of a percentage figure
ow makes it appear that something very specific .
percent of the ma~or racketeers would be
of bus~ess by ~he end of the year if the ordin~y
~en, the businessman, the ~ion official, and the
~public authority stood up to be co.ted and refused to
(Robert F. Kennedy, speaking at
while he was .Attorney General).
~.i;~-;~~. " 75 to 90 percent of the #0,000 lung cancer
~eaths each year are attributable to smoking.. " (H.
Taylor~ foyer chairm~ of an ~eric~ Cancer Society
" "It has been estimated that at least 85 percent
cigarette smoking•.." (J. B. Flick in Delaware Nedical
Journal .
...ove~-all Clea~li~ess of the streets had
to 85 percent in 1960 " (Robert F. Wagner in New
York mayor"s a~ual report).
This last statement, by the way~ exemplifies
another ch~ac~eristic of many u~owable statis=ics:
deals with something that is undefined and perhaps no~
definable. Precisely what "over-all cleanliness" is in
~ .... • 16 overprecision
ical terms that would ~ustify a percentag~ rating
-remai~.s ~mdefined'by l~oth the mayor's report and his
;..source, the Citizens Committee to Keep New York Clean. .......L....,. Statist~.cs
involving behavior ~ha~ may often be
~regarded as morally ob~ec~ionable seem especially
~ ~h~s d Ne~ York newspaper passes along ~he i~orma-
tha~ ~here ~e as many as a million drug addicts in
.co~tw and that "most of them are yo~g people."
the Federal B~eau of Narcotics reported that in 196#...
were 2,029 persons ~der the age of ~wenty-one
popular estimate cited, we must believe that there are
:~.::..three or fo~ h~dred ~nown yo~g addicts for each one
~~i~ ~,~... - ~ • L.i~i~~ii~~~ is in this neighborhood is difficult to imagine.
, .' .., ,ff , - . ,,. :. - _ ..
VIII. 8~I ATTAC~D FIGURES
.- ".. '<t~~" •
" , .....
."~',b..... country ~d the United States, a Ge~an critic ex-
pressed alarm at the discovery that while 79.5 per-
cent of ~eric~s finish high school, only about 8
";~;~<;~.:]~:~:~;i~-:percen~ of Germans complete Hochschule. On the face
~;~,i):~:~,.~:".~.~-~,~:of it, this ratio of something like ten ~ one may
seem significant and a cause for concern, but in
fact this is only an ex~ple of a semi-attached fi~re.
........ • he ~eric~ high school an~ the German Hochschule
have been ass~ed comparaole because they bear similar
n~es, but they ~e not at all the s~e thing. Direct
comparisons between them are therefore meaningless.
A~ a 1966 medical meeting,
something resembling h~an emphysema had been produced
experimentally in dogs. The dogs had been subjected
to tobacco smoke in twice-daily sessions for a year,
semi-attached- 2 ~ ~,
smoke having been introduced through plastic tubes
Inserted in their windpipes. This information led to
~gestlons that we now had experimental evidence of
a causal relationship between cigarette smoking and
:emphysema in human beings.
~But of course what we have, once more, is semi-
Dogs resemble human beings in some respects
but differ in others. Tobacco smoke was used in the
~eriment and tobacco smoke is inhaled by human smokers,
~:!~but the method and degree of exposure to smoke differed
greatly in the experiment ~from what is found in smoking.
~ ~ The personnel manager of a company that is engaged
in a fight with a union conducts an opinion survey of
~ees. ~Amon.g the questions~askedl of each. person is
~!~ whether ~e has a complaint against the union. As might
L~7~!II~" ~°!J~;~'unless the reader of the report--the cons~er of
~x~, ~,%~.,.~,,,,.~,~..~ hand. As a substitute for what cabot be had, f~es
--.,-.,~:~. ........ . ~.~.. concerned keeps it firmly in mind that these are semi ....
• .~<,--4~.,:,,'.'c..--, attached fig~es and not direct evidenc~
~,"-:J:~:7:~;."~ a ~eriod of years by a pharmaceutical company. Unable
~t~b'..~,~,.~,--"~ .... show that its mouthwash was e~fective as a remedy for
...: -. killed some very specific n~ber--~l,108, say--of germs
a test tube in s~ ma~ seconds. The reader was e~ected
to ass~e t~t it would be equally effective, in proper
dilutions, in his t~oat, against whatever it is
c ~ e s colds.
Also fallinE into the first category was th~ use
.. once made against railroads of the fact that in on~ year-.,
the "n~ber of deaths chargeable to ste~ railroads" was
Semi-attached
The design of motor: cars is under
highly critical observation despite
the insistence of the industry that
the great preponderance of a:cci~en,ts
results from human, not mechanical •
failures--from excessive speeding, .
disregard of road signs, tailgating,
and other driving, improprieties, plus,
of course, one drink too many. Here
thai statistics are with the industry,
an analysis of turnpike accidents in
196~ by the N!ationa:l Safety Council
attributin~ only l0 per cent to the
712. Analysis o~ the figures, however, turns up
something quite different from. what appears on the
~. ]':.,:~j'-:L~...,~:' ..,..... . . , .
..
~':~" ....
~.~7~;-.~-~.surface, Nearly half of those victims were people whose
i.automobiles met trains at crossings, and most of the rest
not ordinary passengers but non-payers riding the
~"'~]: ~' " "
"'~ :'~' ~:3,
.'~rods, ',In the"year in question, ~ust 132 0ut:"~f 4,712
~:~..killed were paying passengers ontrai~s.
;.,~-..,. During the heavy criticism of the automobile in-
.-{,;,...--,. ;' ,.,'.,- ' " " " " ' " . '+s-.
"
7. dustry ~n the first half of 19~, an attempt was made to ."77
• . .,
""'.
~w that "not vehicles but ~rivers were primarily at - .-":~
~ " . :77
':fault in producing accidents. Typical of pro-industry
