Forewarned a field guide to rhetorical manipulation

Technique 03 / 10

Cherry-Picked Statistics

True numbers selected to paint a picture the full data would not support.

Also filed under
selective evidence · data dredging
Field marks
“a suspiciously specific date range”“percent change with no baseline”“one study standing in for a field”
Countermove
Ask: what does the whole series look like?

Section 01 · The mechanic

How it works

Numbers feel like the end of an argument. Someone says “crime rose 40 percent” and the conversation tilts, because who are you to argue with math? But almost every statistic is one frame from a longer film, and the person quoting it chose which frame you see.

The choices hide in the boring parts. Which year is the baseline. Whether the count is raw or per capita. Which of the six available studies got cited and which five stayed in the drawer. A 40 percent rise from a historic low can leave you safer than you were a decade ago, and the sentence announcing it is still, technically, true.

That is the thing to hold onto: cherry-picking rarely requires a false number. It requires a true number and a quiet decision about where to point the camera. So the countermove is always the same request. Zoom out. Show me the whole series, the neighboring years, the other studies, and let me see the frame in its film.

Section 02 · The drill

Try it in Crestfield

Crestfield is not a real town, which is the point. Nothing here is at stake, so you can watch the technique work without anything else tugging at you.

A mailer from the Crestfield Taxpayers Alliance says: "Crime in Crestfield is up 40 percent under this council." The police department's annual reports show total incidents by year: 2019: 210. 2020: 130. 2021: 145. 2022: 182. The mailer's math compares 2022 against 2020.

What is that 40 percent doing?

Section 03 · In the wild

Sourced examples

Real statements, quoted verbatim, with the primary source and an archived copy linked under each one. The callouts describe what the statement does, never what the speaker intended. Examples are drawn from opposing camps on purpose; the technique belongs to no one.

elected official (sitting president) · camp: left · State of the Union address, official White House archived transcript (as-prepared text)

“our economy created over 6.5 Million new jobs just last year, more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of America”

  1. A true count with a chosen starting line

    The number is real. The year it counts began partway out of the deepest employment crash in the modern records, so the count measures a rebound toward the old level as if it were entirely new ground.

  2. The yardstick that produces the record

    As a raw count in a country with more workers than ever, 2021 ranks first. As a percentage of existing jobs, the comparison that puts 1939 and 2021 on the same footing, it does not. The sentence uses the yardstick that yields the superlative.

What the full record shows

The count is accurate: roughly 6.5 to 6.7 million jobs were added in 2021, the largest single-year raw gain in records going back to 1939. The fuller record shows the economy shed around 22 million jobs in the spring of 2020, so much of 2021's gain refilled that hole rather than setting new employment highs, and measured as a percentage of existing employment several earlier years rank ahead of 2021. PolitiFact rated the claim Half True on exactly this basis. The quote is excerpted mid-sentence from the official as-prepared text.

Context: source 1 · source 2

State of the Union address, official White House archived transcript (as-prepared text) · March 1, 2022 · primary source · archived copy · flag a correction

United States senator (Senate hearing, opening statement) · camp: right · Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing ('Data or Dogma?'), official transcript published by the Government Publishing Office

“According to the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for the past 18 years. Those are the data.”

  1. The window has a chosen starting line

    Counting back 18 years from 2015 lands the series' start on 1998, the year an exceptionally strong El Nino spiked global temperatures. Measured from that spike, the trend flattens; measured from the years on either side of it, the warming trend reappears. The window is doing the arguing.

  2. One dataset stands in for the field

    The sentence rests on one family of satellite measurements while, over the same span, independent surface records from multiple agencies showed continued warming, and 2014 had just set a record with 2015 about to break it. 'The data,' singular and settled, is a much larger claim than the dataset it stands on.

What the full record shows

The satellite series was real and the sentence described it accurately, which is what makes this a specimen of selection rather than fabrication. Fact-checkers examining the claim found it depended on starting the series at the 1998 El Nino peak, a baseline that flattens any trend measured from it, and on preferring one dataset over the several independent surface records that showed continued warming through the same period. The satellite series itself was later revised in a way that reduced the flat stretch. At the time the sentence was spoken, the year in progress was setting a new global temperature record in the surface data.

Context: source 1 · source 2

Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing ('Data or Dogma?'), official transcript published by the Government Publishing Office · December 8, 2015 · primary source · archived copy · flag a correction

Section 04 · Self-test

Call them yourself

Some of these use the technique and some play it straight. All of them are fictional. Read each one, make a call, and check your eye.

Exhibit A

The Crestfield Gazette reports:

“Library visits doubled after the renovation, from 8,000 to 16,000 a year, which returns them to roughly their average before the building closed.”

Cherry-picked or fair use of the numbers?

Exhibit B

A council candidate's speech:

“Under my opponent, your water rates went up 25 percent.”

Records show rates rose 25 percent across the opponent's twelve years in office, roughly tracking inflation, with the county average rising 31 percent in the same span. Cherry-picked or fair?

Exhibit C

An ad for a sleep supplement sold at the Crestfield pharmacy:

“In one study, users reported 30 percent better sleep.”

Cherry-picked or fair?

Exhibit D

The Crestfield school board's statement on test results:

“Math scores fell 4 points this year. That is within the normal year-to-year swing, but it is the second straight decline, so we are extending the tutoring pilot rather than waiting.”

Cherry-picked or fair?

Answered 0 of 4

Section 05 · The hard one

Now try it on your own side

Last one. Crestfield's youth center is the kind of thing most people reading this site would happily fund, and its supporters are fighting a budget cut. Their flyer leads with a number.

“Since the youth center opened three years ago, teen arrests in Crestfield are down 60 percent.”

The county's records show teen arrests falling at about the same steady rate for five years before the center opened, and continuing at that rate since. You want the center funded. What do you make of the flyer's number?