“These stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could”

Pinchas Lev writes:

After reading your blog and Krugman’s article, and noticing the interest you have in the ongoing debate surrounding healthcare reform, I figured you might find the email I received from the President’s website interesting.

In particular, I [Pinchas] would like to highlight the sentence, six lines into the email, in which Biden says that “[these] stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could.” I find it troubling that policymakers who are advocating “evidence based medicine,” trump anecdotal evidence over that which is anchored in statistics.

Here’s the email:

———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:06:43 -0400
From: Vice President Joe Biden
Subject: You’ve got to read these

A few weeks ago, President Obama asked you to share your personal story about how the health care crisis has affected you and the ones you love. Hundreds of thousands of stories poured in from every corner of the country. The President and I have read through many of them ourselves — and now I’m encouraging you to do so as well.

Read these powerful, personal stories from people in your area and around the country:

http://healthcare.barackobama.com/stories

And after you do, please forward this note on to as many people as you can.

For folks who don’t yet understand why health care reform is such an urgent priority, these stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could.
. . .

The funny thing is, Biden’s gotta be right, that for most people, the stories do make the case “better than any statistics ever could.” It’s still a little disturbing to me to see this, though.

3 thoughts on ““These stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could”

  1. Biden (well, whoever wrote this email that Biden approved) *is* right. It's a question of semantics. To "make a case" means a different thing to a scientist, a lawyer, and a politician. The first usually needs to demonstrate rejection of a null hypothesis; the second needs to acheive certain subjective levels of (un)certainty as judged by one or a dozen people; and the third needs to acheive adequate consensus to make progress while minimizing negative political externalities.

    Stats are really only effective in the first of these cases.

    Incidentally, Mr. Lev provides an example of political case-making at work: those supporting real healthcare reform are only advocating "evidence-based medicine" to certain audiences, of which Mr. Lev is a member. The same proposals are being sold as "fair and just" to others (social progressives), as "a helping hand" to yet others (those who are uninsured), and as "fiscally responsible" to still others (those who recognize the economic and fiscal threat of ballooning health costs).

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