1817) Asking the right question is the pillar of good science, both social and otherwise, as well as a source of endless debate and despair among researchers. In survey work, the perfect question has become the Holy Grail, forever out of reach. Researchers dedicate themselves to the question, experimenting with words to create the perfect inquiry - a question that does not presume, lead or color. But [...] there will never be a truly neutral question.

Researchers know one thing about questions: However precise and neutral they seem to be, they often have unpredictable effects - response effects, researchers call them. Response effects arise from the quirkiness of language and the complexities of human emotion - pride, embarrassment, self-righteousness, contempt or any of the hundreds of other strings that play when one person speaks to another. Even under ideal circumstances, when asked to remember something recent and concrete, recall is often different from fact. [...]

The imprecision of language exacerbates the problem. Single words that mean the same thing con convey wildly different ideas. Taxes or revenues? MX missile or Peacekeeper? Pro-choice or pro-abortion? Welfare or public assistance? Department of War or Department of Defense? [...] S.I. Hayakawa called some words "purr-words" and others "snarl-words." A young monk was once rebuffed by his superior when he asked if he could smoke while he prayed. Ask a different question, a friend advised. Ask if you can pray wile you smoke. [...]

[R]esearchers now know that the order in which questions are asked is as critical as the wording of any of them. [...] The wording of questions, their order, their intonation, the pacing - are all so subtly persuasive that they can look innocent even thought they have been consciously manipulated. The pitfalls of the researcher's craft have become the tools of its corruption.

Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1818) The thinner the data, the thicker the dogma.

unnamed researcher
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1819) Pecuniary Truth: Truth is what sells. Truth is what you want people to believe. Truth is that which is not legally false.

Jules Henry
Culture Against Man (1963)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1820) Deception is often undertaken by those who know or assume that they have a more objective view of the situation than those to whom they speak. [...] [They] sincerely believe that they manipulate facts in order to convey a "truer picture".

Sissela Bok
Lying (1978)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1821) Overseeing advertising claims is a relatively modern phenomenon, another consequence of our increasingly complex world. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, people typically had a "craft knowledge" of most things they bought - they understood how the product was made and how to judge its quality - and advertising rarely outweighed it. But as the number of products and their technological sophistication grew, people could not maintain a craft knowledge of most items they bought - their blender, their lawn mower, even their cake mix. Today a few people retain knowledge of cars or of items used for a hobby, such as fishing or skiing. But most have neither the opportunity nor the expertise to inspect technologically sophisticated goods coming from around the globe.

Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1822) When the people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

E.G. Bulwer-Lytton
Alice; Or, The Mysteries (1838)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1823) [T]hat great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs which is called public opinion.

Sir Robert Peel
letter to John Wilson Croker (3/23/1820)
Croker Papers (1884)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1824) It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong.

Harry S. Truman
quoted by David McCollough in
Truman (1992)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1825) In public policy debates and deliberations, words like decency, right and wrong, fairness, trust and hope have lost their force. Numbers, which can offer so much illumination and guidance if used professionally and ethically, have become the tools of advocacy. Even if their cause is worthy, people who massage data undermine the power and purity of statistics that may be crucial to future decisions. There are numbers we will never know, and we should admit it. It is essential to understand the homeless before making policy about them. But [...] understanding is not the same as counting.

Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1826) The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told at all times. If we do not penalise false statements made in error, we open up the way, don't you see, for false statements by intention. And of course a false statement of fact made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.

C.P. Snow
The Search (1959)
quoted (in part) by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1827) The idea of seeking truth through advocacy is tested most often in America's courts of law. At the heart of the legal system is the belief that truth lies among the self-interested claims of competing parties. The ethics of [social] research are quite different. Self-interest, though acknowledged to be inevitable, is seen as something to be staunchly resisted. Although scientists and social scientists who appear in court insist their work meets their profession's highest standards, in fact their work always supports their clients' positions, or else it and they are simply dropped from the action.

The bald self-interest at the heart of litigation research is only one of the many ways it differs from the academic search for truth. A court constructs its view of truth from the materials before it. If a witness says black is white, and no one contradicts it, then for the purpose of the court, black is white. Legal adversaries stake out extreme positions, making consensus unlikely. In research, however, consensus is an indicator - though an imperfect one - of truth.

The methods by which the two disciplines seek truth also differ. In uncorrupted research, the ideal is to search for an unknown, probably hypothesized, truth; in law, it is to assemble facts to support a predetermined position.

Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)

1828) Since it has become standard procedure for many kinds of cases to produce two sets of competing data, judges and juries often fall back on the more subjective judgment of credibility: which expert had better credentials, was more articulate or held up better under cross-examination.

Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America (1994)