"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point. The phrase derives from the full sentence, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."; it was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain and others, who mistakenly attributed it to the British prime ministerBenjamin Disraeli. The phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. The phrase was attributed to an anonymous writer in mid-1891 and later that year to Sir Charles Dilke, but several others have been listed as originators of the quote, including frequent erroneous attribution to Twain himself.
History
Mark Twain popularized the saying in Chapters from My Autobiography, published in the North American Review in 1907. "Figures often beguile me," he wrote, "particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'" Attribution of the saying likely derives from earlier expressions regarding legal witness, where it takes forms relating liars, damned liars, and experts:
That phrase is found in the science journal, Nature, in November 1885: "A well-known lawyer, now a judge, once grouped witnesses into three classes: simple liars, damned liars, and experts. He did not mean that the expert uttered things which he knew to be untrue, but that by the emphasis which he laid on certain statements, and by what has been defined as a highly cultivated faculty of evasion, the effect was actually worse than if he had," where the reference to the judge may be to Baron Bramwell.
In a meeting of the x Club held on 5 December 1885, T.H. Huxley described the conversation thus: "Talked politics, scandal, and the three classes of witnesses—liars, d—d liars, and experts."
The earliest instance of the phrase that includes the reference to statistics that is found in print dates to a letter written in the British newspaper National Observer on 8 June 1891, published 13 June 1891, where it was written: "Sir, —It has been wittily remarked that there are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third and most aggravated is statistics. It is on statistics and on the absence of statistics that the advocate of national pensions relies...." In a question appearing on 10 October of that same year, in Notes and Queries, a pseudonymous contributor signing as "St Swithin" asked for the originator of the expression, "There are three degrees of falsehood: the first is a fib, the second is a lie, and then come statistics", to which a W.D. Gainsford replied, as originating with a judge at Lincoln's Inn, further suggesting common usage even at that date. The pseudonym "St Swithin" has been associated with folklorist and author Eliza Gutch. The American Dialect Society list archives and the summary of the late Professor Peter M. Lee include information from Stephen Goranson that cite research into uses soon after the above. They include Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, who is reported to have twice used the phrase in October 1891, without attributing it to others :
"Sir Charles Dilke... was saying the other day that false statements might be arranged according to their degree under three heads, fibs, lies, and statistics.".
"A mass meeting of the slate quarry-men of Festiniog was held Wednesday night to protest against certain dismissals from one of the quarries...." He observed that the speeches of the Bishops on the disestablishment question reminded him that there were three degrees of untruth—a fib, a lie, and statistics."
Dilke is cited again for the expression, in 1894, by Elgin Gould. Alternative attributions of the expression include, among many others—including Walter Bagehot and Arthur James Balfour—the radical English journalist and politician Henry Du Pré Labouchère, Jervoise Athelstane Baines, and British politician and man of letters Leonard H. Courtney, who used the phrase in 1895 and two years later became president of the Royal Statistical Society. Courtney is quoted by Baines as attributing the phrase to a "wise statesman". The phrase has also been attributed to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Robert Giffen, Walter Bagehot's assistant editor at The Economist and President of the Statistical Society from 1882 to 1884, was a further early writer to have connected the expression regarding statistics to the expression regarding experts. Writing in the Economic Journal in 1892, he stated:
An old jest runs to the effect that there are three degrees of comparison among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are scientific experts. This has lately been adapted to throw dirt upon statistics. There are three degrees of comparison, it is said, in lying. There are lies, there are outrageous lies, and there are statistics.
Uses
Books
The phrase has been used in a number of popular expositions, including:
Michael Wheeler's Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America,.
John Bibby's Quotes, Damned Quotes... Some of Them to Do With Statistics, a work that attempts to untangle the history of this quotation.
Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists.
Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics.
Other media
Stephen Jay Gould's 1985 essay, "The Median Isn't the Message", first published in Discover Magazine, begins by repeating this quote. Gould explains how the statistic that peritoneal mesothelioma, the form of cancer with which he was diagnosed in July 1982, has a "median survival time of eight months" is misleading given the distribution of that data, and relevant data regarding his individual prognosis.
Popular culture
"Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics" is the name of episode 21 in the first season of NBC drama The West Wing.
