Digging Beyond the Hype

Someone choosing to tell you where you’re wrong says, “[insert people group they don’t like] are supposed to be subordinate to white men because [insert favorite snippet of Bible writing].”

You open Facebook (heaven forbid) and see someone you sort of know citing a “fact” that you know is way off. My lord, have I seen some very wrong or misused statistics there.

Someone cites a “fact”…

Do you ever stop to ask how they got that? Could you ask them five times nicely in order to probe more deeply, “How do you know that?” Or, “Where did you get that?”

Do you know how to find and evaluate the context and language of that quote?

Do you know how to evaluate a “study”? How to look beyond the published “statistics” at the structure of the questionnaire, the types of questions, what was the population, are they only using averages?

I am reminding myself as much as you about asking questions, digging beyond the glib and superficial. Go beyond the hype into understanding.

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