Hi folks. Sorry to do this, but I’ll be away till next Monday (April 28, 2008).

Have a great week and see you all soon.

As of today, I have more than 100 RSS subscribers! Thanks for reading everyone…I really hope you enjoy the content. If there’s anything you’d like to see more/less of, please let me know with a comment or an email.

Continuing on in my How To Lie With Statistics series, let’s talk about “Much Ado About Practically Nothing.”

For the sake of simplicity and consistency we have many standards in this world that involve thresholds. An abortion can only happen prior to the 20th week of gestation, a person is of normal intelligence if his or her IQ is above 100, and a warrant expires after 30 days. We follow these rules as if the cut off period were determined by some all knowing entity and set in stone.

In fact, we’re missing something. That something is the standard error (or standard deviation…I won’t get into the difference right now…but there’s a big one). When we report a threshold, what we’re really reporting is the average time at which something should occur. In the case of abortions, one is termed as “late-term” if 20 weeks have passed. But the reality is that some fetuses mature faster than others and some mature slower than others. So really, we should talk about 20 weeks + or – some number of weeks. We should provide a range of possibilities based on the standard error associated with the underlying data.

Similarly, we can look at the warranty example. Firms know full well how long a product should last and often determine the length of a warranty to be somewhere in that range. What they are ostensibly saying is that their product will last approximately the length of the warranty. But what happens when your laptop break after 1 year and 2 days (assuming a 1 year warranty)? According to the firm, you’re out of luck. But really, the expectation of a 1 year life time is just an average and needs an associated standard error. The life span is really 1 year, plus or minus some number of days/weeks. Firms take advantage of this fact and customers suffer.

The point is that whenever you see an average, make sure to find out the standard error as well. This is done very frequently in political polls when you see that X is beating Y by 3% but the error on the result is also 3%. This suggests that it is very possible that the margin that X is beating Y by doesn’t actually exist in the population. Be aware of this and know you’ll be much better off when reading (and creating) statistics!

Part 1 - The Sample with the Built-in Bias
Part 2- The Well-Chosen Averge
Part 3 - The Little Figures That Are Not There

I’m a big fan of iced teas and drink lots of them throughout my day. I enjoy the healthier and organic variants so today I decided to try Honest Tea (the Peach Flavor).

First of all, the tea is quite good. It’s not too sweet (which is consistent with their mantra: “Just a Tad Sweet,” and has a nice crispness to it. What stood out, however, was some information about the antioxidants present in the tea.

Here’s the entire label (click for the full size):

What I’d like to highlight is the main part of their label:

Specifically, I’d like you to focus on the bar that I’ve circles below:

What the hell does that bar represent? It looks like a loading bar for a website! I’m sure it’s supposed to indicate how much EGCG (SuperAnioxidant) is in the bottle (150mg apparently), but come on? It’s just a bar that is about 3/4 full. I realize that they are trying to make the information seem more scientific, but this is just kind of whacky!

I will start this post with the punch line: Friday night I was escorted out of the New York Scientology Headquarters and told to never come back.

Rewind two hours and you’ll find me, on a trip to New York, thinking about the despicable organization known as Scientology. I have read many articles (most notably in Rolling Stone Magazine) describing the brainwashing tactics of Scientology, but I always felt like I couldn’t fairly criticize them without first hand experience. So instead of spending my night drinking with friends, I decided to venture into the demon’s lair. I walked over to 46th st. (just near Times Square) and told the receptionist that I was interested in learning about Scientology.

I decided before walking in that I would a) use a fake name and address (no need to get spam from them) and b) with the exception of my motivation for being there I would be as truthful as possible. I’ve heard that no matter how well adjusted you are, Scientology has a way of finding your “flaws.” I consider myself to be very well adjusted and successful and so I wanted to see just how deep these people would need to dig to find something “wrong with me.”

First, let’s start off by saying that everyone was incredibly friendly. Every person I saw smiled at me and introduced themselves with the apparent desire to be friends. I was offered coffee and cookies on numerous occasions and when I asked for water or the use of the restroom, people were eagerly accommodating.

The adventure began with a 15 minute video about the basics of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s first book on the subject of the mind (though clearly not his first work of science fiction). The video was surprisingly well produced but was as much a work of fiction as anything I’ve heard about Scientology (see Lord Xenu). Basically, I was informed that I have two minds: an analytical mind (conscious mind) and a reactive mind (unconscious). The former is what I have control over, and the latter is the root of all the problems in my life.

The idea is that when I am unconscious (due to trauma like a car accident…though not due to sleeping…go figure) my senses are still absorbing everything around me and other people’s words get imprinted in my reactive mind. Then when I experience something similar (say another bad situation with a car) those incidental comments creep into my conscious in negative ways. For example (straight from the video), if I am unconscious in an ambulance and the EMTs are talking about breaking up with a girlfriend, then next time I have a traumatic experience with my girlfriend around I will break up with her (I wish I were making this up).

Okay, once the video was over (as was any remaining belief that this was a legitimate organization) and they had me fill out a short questionnaire (pretty benign). Enter sate left: Ray, a scientologist of 38 years. He comes over and asks me if I wanted to have a chat about the video and any questions I may have. I was all too eager to go with him. We went into a small office with a desk and a two chairs spaced pretty far apart and began the discussion (note that the door was always open…this is important for a later point).

Our discussion lasted for about 40 minutes and, although I would love to go over every single idiotic thing that he said, I’ll just give you the broad brush strokes. The gist of the conversation was me asking him questions about Scientology and him answering “you should get auditing and read Dianetics.” Every time I pressed him on any of these issues it was apparent from his facial expression that he was agitated and defensive.

I asked him if there was empirical data supporting the benefits of Scientology. He responded that L. Ron Hubbard did some back in the ‘50s but because the American Psychological Association wouldn’t accept them as credible, he never published them. I asked him if there was any other data. He responded that for the real answers I should get auditing. This went on and on.

The point is that he never actually answered any of my questions. The other point is that throughout the entire discussion he was incredibly pleasant and inviting. He was smiling, making jokes, and generally trying to put me at ease. He was the soft sell. This would soon change.

At the end of our discussion Ray suggested that I complete a personality test that would help determine where Scientology could help me improve. I sat down with the 200 question “Oxford Capacity Analysis” and began answering the questions. I won’t begin to address how ridiculous some of these questions were (see here, here, and here for that). Anyway, I answered all the questions, had them “graded”, and sat down with Rebecca, a Scientologist from the age of 14.

The mood with Rebecca was very different from what I had experienced with Ray. We sat in a similar office but now the door was closed and Rebecca sat about 8 inches away from me. She was an attractive blonde woman in her mid-20s and always had a smile on her face. She presented me with the following:

This was the analysis of my personality based on the “rigorous” research that L. Ron Hubbard conducted back in his prime. First let’s talk about the test and then we’ll talk about Rebecca some more.

As it was explained to me, higher numbers are better and anything at the bottom needs improvement. As you can see I’m amazingly active and aggressive, but woefully critical, lacking in accord, and withdrawn. Scientology to the rescue! Immediately I was told that although my “active” and “aggressive” scores were high, they were actually bad because they were above my “certainty” score. Huh? I though higher was better? It turns out that actually higher is only better when they say it’s better. Otherwise it’s bad. Just trust them, they know what they’re doing…they’re professionals.

My first suggestion to Rebecca was to rescale the results based on “certainty” as a neutral point so that the rest of the results could be more easily interpreted by people. She answered that she had been trained to interpret these results and that I didn’t understand them because I was unqualified (note the Masters degree on my wall and the eventual PhD in a behavioral science). This back and forth went on for another 20 minutes. She would explain to me how bad my life was and I would explain to her that my life was great. She would tell me that the test was 98-99% correct. I would tell her that “correct” implies accurate which implies a correlation with reality…since they don’t have a way to assess reality, the “correctness” of this test was spurious.

Now onto Rebecca herself. Despite her friendly appearance, she was the hard sell. She insisted on several occasions that she wasn’t trying to sell me anything but proceeded to place the Dianetics book in my lab four times (after I placed it on the desk) and told me that the best course of action given my results would be to get “auditing” more than six times (I forget the exact number). She stared at me constantly and didn’t express much emotion after our initial introduction. At one point she told me that my lack of communication skills was evident since I kept avoiding eye contact. I told her that was because she was constantly staring at me and that most people would react the same way.

Towards the end of my discussion with Rebecca, and after one too many attempts to get me to sign up for auditing, I lost it. My voice got louder and my body language grew rigid. I “explained” to Rebecca that I thought the results of this test were bogus and that I didn’t appreciate being lied to and made to feel inferior just so that I would sign up for auditing. I told her that I would never sign up for something that I knew to be so ridiculous and ungrounded in truth. I think she got the idea. She tried to take my personality test results back but I insisted that I keep them and stuffed them into my pocket. She then told me to leave.

But I wasn’t done. I needed to speak with Ray first. Thankfully he was in the next office over with a potential recruit (not that that stopped me). I told him (with some vigor) that I had never been quite so angry with an organization as I was just then. I explained that I thought Scientology was a cult designed to extract money from genuinely distressed people and that it was causing far more harm than good. I then turned to the potential recruit and implored him to get out before it was too late. I explained to him how Ray couldn’t answer any of my questions and how wrong all this was.

Apparently I didn’t realize quite how loud I was yelling because after a couple of minutes of this several other Scientologists were around me. They informed me that if I didn’t leave they would call the police. With three of them in escort, I left.

I was so angry that I just stood outside of the building (in the rain) for a few minutes trying to cool down. To my surprise, the potential recruit that I saw in Ray’s office came out and approached me (I didn’t get his name). He asked me if I could explain some more why I was so down on Scientology and so I did. We talked for about 15 minutes and he thanked me for giving him so much information. He said he had experienced some real trauma in his life and that he was looking for some help. He turned to conventional religion (Christianity) and that failed him. So he wanted to try Scientology. Thanks to my rant in Ray’s office, he realized that this was not the answer either. I told him that there were many well trained psychologists and social workers in the city that could help him out. We looked up some social workers on my iPhone and he wrote down the numbers. I don’t know what will become of him, but I hoping that he gets some help. And not the type of sham help that Scientology is doling out.

In all, I was given the soft sell by Ray and the hard sell by Rebecca. Had I come to them with real problems, maybe I would have been convinced. Maybe I would have drunk the Kool-Aid. Who knows? They’re clearly very good at sucking people in and keeping them there. Now that I’ve cooled down, I realize just how scary this is. They prey on people’s insecurities and provide apparently scientific evidence (Oxford Capacity Analysis) to show them just how screwed up they are. Then they dig in and get you to buy buy buy.

These people need to be shut down.