Evaluating Simplistic Claims About Social Problems
All social problems have easy answers, don’t they? Social activists like to complicate things and politicians like to spin the facts to suit their agenda. Academics like to get their grant money, so they benefit from making things seem more complicated than they are.
If you took a survey, a bet you would find that most people agree with one of the statements in that opening paragraph. Those people wouldn’t be all wrong. However, being suspicious about every claim and every idea isn’t good either. What’s better? A few reminders about how to evaluate claims about the causes of social problems, and their solutions, indicate the solution — more science literacy.
The Right Way to Test Ideas:
If someone explains poverty in terms of laziness or stupidity, you have the pop-culture version of a theory, in short, you have heard an educated guess. Maybe that educated guess wasn’t supposed to explain all poverty, only some of it.
In the article “Blanket Claims About Social Problems”, I wrote about the causes of social problems and their cures, specifically how both get oversimplified for political reasons.
Real Evidence and Fake Evidence:
Activists and politicians love to pick statistics that make their case. That’s not how it works. Plenty of articles and a few books have been written on how to identify statistics abuse.
Activists and politicians also love to share personal stories. Nothing’s wrong with a story. Personal stories are a great way to illustrate how a problem affects people. Journalists and documentary filmmakers focus on individuals and families for just that reason.
Thinking About Numbers
An activist might mention sexual assault data or a report on the causes of gun violence. Any course on scientific literacy or on critical thinking is going to ask students to check those sources.
Check those statistics. Dishonest discussions of why this problem exists or what to do about that problem tend to issues with statistics. Look for three things:
The numbers are old. Pointing out the number of people on food stamps 10–20 years ago doesn’t tell us much about welfare today.
The numbers don’t come with a source. Anyone can claim thousands of people cheat the welfare system in New York each month. But, who determined this was true? And can you trust them?
The numbers don’t relate to the issue. This one can the toughest to spot but welfare offers a good example: Someone points out there were 31,000 cases of welfare fraud in 2017 for example. That number is made up, but it doesn’t matter. Some fraud cases don’t mean welfare is bad for society.
This is easy, Thinking 101 stuff. However, social problems are not like natural phenomena. Most people aren’t too interested in whether rocky planets form this way or that way.
Causes and Cures, Again
Next time a politician or an analyst on cable news talks about a problem, think of the science and the numbers they present. There won’t be much to work with, most of the time, so don’t worry about this exercise taking up lots of time. Pay attention to how they explain the cause of the problem. How do they back up their claims?
New numbers for food stamp usage come out. Joe Politician says that welfare makes people dependant on government because SNAP enrollment is up. Ask yourself if the second thing follows from the first thing. If Jane Analyst claims that banning “weapons” will make us safer, you might ask the same question. If Ms. Analyst mentions statistics on gun homicide, does that really mean that banning assault weapons will do anything?
