BSing with phony precision

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The problem with the claim that every H1B visa creates 1.83 new American jobs is the absurd precision with which this result is put forward. We are dealing with a topic of vast complexity, where a myriad of causal factors are interacting to produce the observed outcome, and for which we have no control group and no ability to do repeated experiments using a controlled environment.

"But we used the most sophisticated statistical techniques to produce our result!" the researchers might respond. Very amusing: I guarantee that, with the same data set, an anti-H1B visa group could produce a study that "proves" that for each H1B visa issued, .794321 American jobs are lost.

"1.83" is an attempt to snow the reader with precision: "Wow, if they can cite the number to 2 decimal places, they must really know what they are saying!"

Here is a claim I would be willing to believe: "Based on our research, we are pretty sure that each H1B visa issued creates between one and three new American jobs."

Comments

  1. Andy10:53 AM

    According to the table in this article, the average human male contains 32376.50 Calories.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/counting-calories-of-going-cannibal-on-a-paleo-diet-human-flesh-is-just-meh/?comments=1&post=33116215

    ReplyDelete
  2. Prateek2:03 AM

    Basically, similar to how a study showing 65% correlation sounds plausible, but when you claim 95% correlation, you are probably forcefully fitting the data between the sets.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken B4:14 PM

      I read, and this should terrify you, an account of a government employee who was ordered by his boss to separate and sort the dependent and independent variables before doing a regression. You get stronger results that way it seems.

      Delete

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