PharmaGuy (full profile) wrote:
I just started reading the book "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception" by Charles Seife. The book promises to "conduct a thorough investigation into why so many of us find it so easy to believe things that are patently ridiculous. Why, for example, does anyone take seriously the idea that some vaccines can cause autism..."
I only read the first few pages of the introduction last night, but immediately realized that what I learn from it will help me interpret the BS I often hear from pharmaceutical marketers and spokespeople.
The author defines "proofiness" as "the art of using bogus mathematical arguments to prove something that you know in your heart is true - even when it is not." One tool used by masters of this art is fabricated statistics, which Seife calls Potemkin numbers in analogy to Potemkin villages (fake settlements purportedly erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787).
Full article can be found here
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