Inventing Anti-Gambling Statistics (re:Bachus)

[Mousey]

Inventing Anti-Gambling StatisticsCategory: Politics
Posted on: July 24, 2008 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton

Mark Twain famously said there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Perhaps we can add a fourth kind: statistics that are outright lies. Jacob Sollum documents a whopper of a lie from Rep. Spencer Bauchus (R-AL) in his arguments for banning online gambling.

Speaking against the bill, Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the committee's ranking Republican, explained that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the law that requires the regulations, is all about saving the youth of America from a potentially lethal addiction. "McGill University found that one-third of college students who gamble on the Internet ultimately attempted suicide," he averred. He added, "That is why the rate of suicide on our college campuses has doubled in the past 10 years."
Wow! A University study found that 1/3 of college students who gamble try to kill themselves! And suicide on college campuses has doubled in the last ten years! Except that both of those stats appear to have been pulled directly from Bauchus' rectum. Jeffrey L. Derevensky, a gambling and addiction research at McGill University, says their studies didn't even address that issue, much less reach that conclusion.

This assertion, which is reportedly based upon our empirical research, is not predicated upon any factual evidence. None ....