Nitpicking and grinning

Good deeds and noble lies

With the general election a past memory, it’s time I can finally weigh in on something deeply troubling.

While flipping through the Graham Leader I noticed an ad featuring some very strange statistics. A full-page advertisement paid for by Families for Graham’s Future, featured a slew of statistics regarding wet counties  that, without context, seemed disturbing. Having taken a course in statistics, I noticed a few flaws in logic that violate the key principles of statistics, namely that causation equals correlation. The stats implied that alcohol is the main culprit behind the increased crime rates in wet counties.

The statistics featured in the ad compared the crimes rates of wet counties and dry counties in an attempt to sway voters from approving a measure that would legalize the sale of alcohol in Graham. On its face, they seemed compelling with wet counties having 121 percent more murders, 326 percent more robberies and 142 percent more negligent manslaughter arrests than  the crime rates in dry counties. 

The reason the difference is astronomical is because dry counties are typically in rural areas with a sparse population. A higher population naturally means more crime.   Moreover, the statistics the variety of other factors that could lead to an increased crime rate such as urban decay, law enforcement efforts to prevent alcohol-related crimes as well as social factors that may encourage drinking, such as living downtown, near college campus or sports venue. The ad did not even list exactly who came up with the stats. After an online search, using key terms from the ad, I only found homemade far-right websites that did not cite their sources.   

The anonymous people behind Families for Graham’s Future think what they’re doing is right, but they are telling noble lies. To them, a little lie is OK so long as it benefits the entire community, like telling a child Santa Claus exists or warning a teen that eating chocolate leads to acne. The intent is good, but the execution is evil.

So what does this have to do with Olney? Eventually, an alcohol sales amendment will end up on a ballot and people need to make an informed decision on the issue rather than taking the word of someone who thinks they know better and will lie to prove it.