More damned lies and statistics: How numbers confuse public issues

More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages

  Best, Joel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

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References (183)

1. Some readers may recall that I made a similar statement in Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 27.
2. This book presents diVerent examples, organized in a different way, and I have tried to minimize the overlap, but the underlying approach is the same.
3. You needn't have read the first book to understand this one, however;
4. the two are intended to complement each other.
5. Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (New York: Norton, 1954);
6. Gerald E. Jones, How to Lie with Charts (San Francisco: Sybex, 1995);
7. Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
8. Robert Hooke, How to Tell the Liars from the Statisticians (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1983);
9. Richard P. Runyon, How Numbers Lie (Lexington, Mass.: Lewis, 1981);
10. Best, Damned Lies and Statistics;
11. Tukufu Zuberi, Thicker than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
12. Other books have chapters on the theme: see, for example, "Statistics and Damned Lies," in A. K. Dewdney, 200% of Nothing (New York: Wiley, 1993), pp. 23-42.
13. In addition, a recent three-hundred-page book designed to help statistics instructors reach their students includes a seventeen-page chapter entitled "Lying with Statistics," which addresses issues of bias;
14. see Andrew Gelman and Deborah Nolan, Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 147-163.
15. Rather is quoted in Lynnell Hancock, "The School Shootings: Why Context Counts," Columbia Journalism Review 40 (May 2001):76.
16. Much has been published about these episodes, and particularly on the Columbine shootings.
17. See, for example, Daniel M. Filler, "Random Violence and the Transformation of the Juvenile Justice Debate," Virginia Law Review 86 (2000):1095-1125;
18. Gary Kleck, "There Are No Lessons to Be Learned from Littleton," Criminal Justice Ethics 18 (Winter 1999):2, 61-63.
19. Relevant compilations of evidence regarding school violence include Margaret Small and Kellie Dressler Tetrick, "School Violence: An Overview," Juvenile Justice (U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) 8 (June 2001):3-12;
20. Phillip Kaufman, et al., Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2001 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, 2001);
21. Kim Brooks, Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, School House Hype: Two Years Later (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 1999);
22. National School Safety Center, School Associated Violent Deaths, 2001, available at www.nssc1.org;
23. Mark Anderson, et al., "School-Associated Violent Deaths in the United States, 1994-1999," Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (December 5, 2001):2695-2702.
24. For information about journalists' standards for assessing crime statistics, see Kurt Silver, Understanding Crime Statistics: A Reporter's Guide (n.p.: Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., 2000).
25. Chip Heath, Chris Bell, and Emily Sternberg, "Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001):1028-1041.
26. Cynthia J. Bogard, Seasons Such as These (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 2003).
27. Compare Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, Reagan, in His Own Hand (New York: Free Press, 2001), pp. 241, 459;
28. Tip O'Neill, Man of the House (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 347-348.
29. In response, welfare critics offered their own numbers suggesting that abuses were widespread.
30. One analysis suggested: "A major source of the variations among estimates [for welfare fraud] . . . has been the estimators' use of very different definitions of improprieties" (John A. Gardiner and Theodore R. Lyman, The Fraud Control Game [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984], p. 2).
31. On the 1980s, see Joel Best, Threatened Children (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
32. On 2002, see Donna Leinwand, "Kidnapping Problem 'Impossible' to Quantify," USA Today, August 15, 2002, p. 3A.
33. For an introduction to this approach, see Anthony E. Boardman, et al., Cost-Benefit Analysis: Concepts and Practice (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996).
34. For a critique of one oft-repeated tale of amoral cost-benefit analysts, see Matthew T. Lee and M. David Ermann, "Pinto 'Madness' as a Flawed Landmark Narrative," Social Problems 46 (1999):30-47.
35. Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
36. William Petersen, Ethnicity Counts (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997), pp. 78-81.
37. C. Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long Marler, and Mark Chaves, "What the Polls Don't Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance," American Sociological Review 58 (1993):741-752.
38. On the 2000 census, see Margo Anderson and Stephen E. Fienberg, "Census 2000 and the Politics of Census Taking," Society 39 (November 2001):17-25;
39. Eric Schmitt, "For 7 Million People in Census, One Race Category Isn't Enough," New York Times, March 13, 2001, p. A1.
40. For historical background, see Petersen, Ethnicity Counts.
41. For the basic arguments about how to measure unemployment, see David Leonhardt, "Breadline? What Breadline?" New York Times, June 24, 2001, sec. 4, p. 5;
42. Leonhardt, "Help Wanted: Out of a Job and No Longer Looking," New York Times, September 29, 2002, sec. 4, p. 1.
43. Fox Butterfield, "When Police Shoot, Who's Counting?" New York Times, April 29, 2001, sec. 4, p. 5.
44. For a more general critique of how politics can shape what officials choose not to count, see A. P. Tant, "The Politics of Official Statistics," Government and Opposition 30 (1995):254-266.
45. For a case study of how political considerations can shape the ways an official agency (the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics) collects, analyzes, and presents data, see Kevin D. Haggerty, Making Crime Count (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
46. American Medical Association, Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, "College Binge-Drinking Prevention Program Calls on Princeton Review to Stop Publishing 'Party Schools List,'" press release, August 7, 2002.
47. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1975), p. 58.
48. On some of the ways progress serves to make us more conscious of social problems, see Joel Best, "Social Progress and Social Problems," Sociological Quarterly 42 (2001):1-12.
49. The spread of the falling-coconuts statistic was aided by a British travel insurer;
50. see Beverly Beckham, "Travelers Should Watch Out for Coconuts: The Killer Fruit," Boston Herald, April 7, 2002, p. 30.
51. A discussion of the available data appeared on Cecil Adams's splendid Web site "The Straight Dope" on July 19, 2002; see www.straightdope.com/clumns/020719.
52. Lawrence K. Altman, "Stop Those Presses! Blonds, It Seems, Will Survive After All," New York Times, October 2, 2002, p. A5.
53. Robert Schoen and Robin M. Weinick, "The Slowing Metabolism of Marriage: Figures from 1988 U.S. Marital Status Life Tables," Demography 30 (1993):737-746.
54. The earliest statement of this erroneous statistic I have found appears in Judy Klemesrud, "'If Your Face Isn't Young': Women Confront Problems of Aging," New York Times, October 10, 1980, p. A24.
55. Edward M. Eveld, "Awash in Water: Eight Glasses a Day? It's Probably More Than We Need, Scientists Say," Seattle Times, July 13, 2003, p. L6.
56. For a thorough discussion of this example, see Jonathan Marks, What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
57. Cal Thomas, "Democrats Are Losing Center," Wilmington (Del.) News Journal, August 3, 2003, p. A11.
58. For examples of claims made by proponents and opponents of the tax cut, see David E. Rosenbaum, "Washington Memo: The President's Tax Cut and Its Unspoken Numbers," New York Times, February 25, 2003, p. A25.
59. For an introduction to the concept, see John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (New York: Random House, 1988).
60. Issues of definition and measurement are discussed in Best, Damned Lies and Statistics, pp. 39-52.
61. After inventing this example, I discovered that studies of the relationship between sinistrality (left-handedness) and delinquency do exist.
62. Some report evidence that the two are related (although not as powerfully as my imaginary data suggest), but there seems to be no agreement about why this might be true.
63. See, for instance, William C. Grace, "Strength of Handedness as an Indicant of Delinquents' Behavior," Journal of Clinical Psychology 43 (1987):151-155.
64. It is usually legitimate, however, to compare two or more changes, expressed as percentages, that occurred during the same period.
65. That is, if we measure the rates for two different crimes in 1980 and again in 1990, and our data show that crime X rose 25 percent, while crime Y rose 50 percent, we can conclude that crime Y rose faster than crime X.
66. For a review of the relevant literature, see Willie Langeland and Christina Hartgers, "Child Sexual and Physical Abuse and Alcoholism," Journal of Studies on Alcohol 59 (1998):336-348.
67. For a detailed discussion of the gateway concept, see Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter, Drug War Heresies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 345-351.
68. Heather Hammer, David Finkelhor, and Andrea J. Sedlak, "Children Abducted by Family Members: National Estimates and Characteristics," National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, October 2002).
69. Everyone can profit from reading Edward Tufte's magnificent book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1983).
70. A large, related literature includes Jones, How to Lie with Charts;
71. Howard Wainer, Visual Revelations (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1997).
72. A fine introduction to the principle that the areas of two-dimensional figures must be proportional to the values represented appears in Huff, How to Lie with Statistics, pp. 66-73.
73. Stephanie J. Ventura, T. J. Mathews, and Brady E. Hamilton, "Births to Teenagers in the United States, 1940-2000," National Vital Statistics Reports 49, no. 10 (September 25, 2001):1.
74. For an example of one such critique, see Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 22-23.
75. Lina Guzman, Laura Lippman, Kristin Anderson Moore, and William O'Hare, "How Children Are Doing: The Mismatch Between Public Perception and Statistical Reality," Child Trends Research Brief (July 2003).
76. On the history of this issue, see Harold C. Sox Jr. and Steven Woloshin, "How Many Deaths Are Due to Medical Error? Getting the Number Right," Effective Clinical Practice 3 (2000):277-282.
77. Warren Wolfe, "Reporting Hospital Errors Seen as Good Idea," Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 1, 1999, p. 3B.
78. After citing the estimates of forty-four thousand to ninety-eight thousand annual deaths, this article notes that "medical accidents caused or contributed to 26 deaths in Minnesota hospitals between 1994 and 1997" but does not address the gulf between the very large national estimates and that state's vastly smaller number of deaths attributed to errors.
79. Rodney A. Hayward and Timothy P. Hofer, "Estimating Hospital Deaths Due to Medical Errors," Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (July 25, 2001):418.
80. This study was based on patients at veterans' hospitals, who may be older than-or otherwise differ from-patients in other hospitals.
81. For a more detailed discussion of these problems with measuring trends, see Best, Damned Lies and Statistics, pp. 98-109.
82. Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
83. Andrew Karmen, New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
84. For a critique of the media's coverage of this story, see David Murray, Joel Schwartz, and S. Robert Lichter, It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), pp. 49-52.
85. This example comes from Gerd Gigerenzer, Calculated Risks (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 41.
86. A clear discussion of this point appears in John Brignell, Sorry, Wrong Number! The Abuse of Measurement (Great Britain: Brignell Associates, 2000), pp. 46-51.
87. On the politics of the issue, see Gary Taubes, "Epidemiology Faces Its Limits," Science 269 (July 14, 1995):164-169.
88. Cass R. Sunstein, "Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law," Yale Law Journal 112 (2002):61-107.
89. Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, "Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces, 1996," Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P70-80 (Washington, D.C., February 2002).
90. For a study based on a different sample that reaches similar conclusions, see Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, "First Marriage Dissolution, Divorce, and Remarriage: United States," Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics 323 (May 31, 2001).
91. For a more detailed discussion of these issues
92. see Best, "Social Progress and Social Problems.";
93. The Wilmington News Journal stories (all from wire service reports) were Lindsey Tanner, "Study Takes a Rare Look at Bullying's Broad EVects," April 25, 2001, p. A1;
94. Tammy Webber, "Sexual Solicitation Reported by 20% of Kids Who Use Web," June 20, 2001, p. A6;
95. Lindsey Tanner, "1 in 5 Girls Abused by a Date, Study Suggests," August 1, 2001, p. A5.
96. The corresponding journal articles were Tonja R. Nansel et al., "Bullying Behaviors Among U.S. Youth," Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (April 25, 2001): 2094-2100;
97. Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak, "Risk Factors for and Impact of Online Sexual Solicitation of Youth," Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (June 20, 2001): 3011-3014;
98. Jay G. Silverman et al., "Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality," Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (August 1, 2001): 572-579.
99. On the eVorts of major medical journals to gain media coverage of their articles
100. see Ellen Ruppel Shell, "The Hippocratic Wars," New York Times Magazine, June 28, 1998, pp. 34-38.
101. Nels Ericson, "Addressing the Problem of Juvenile Bullying," Fact Sheet 27, June 2001, U.S. OYce of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Washington, D.C.
102. Nansel et al., "Bullying Behaviors," p. 2095.
103. Despite the quality of the NCHS data, ambiguities remain. For a discussion of these issues
104. see William Petersen, From Birth to Death: A Consumer's Guide to Population Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2000).
105. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Suicide Among Black Youths: United States, 1980-1995," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47 (March 20, 1998): 193-196.
106. Angela G. King, "Suicides Up Among Blacks," New York Daily News, October 22, 2000, p. 32;
107. M. A. J. McKenna, "Black Teen Suicide Rate Skyrockets, CDC Says," Atlanta Constitution, March 20, 1998, p. 1A;
108. Mary Jo Kochakian, "Experts Can't Explain Rise in Suicide Rate Among Black Teens," Hartford Courant, March 31, 1998, p. F4.
109. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Suicide," p. 195.
110. Most of the points raised in this discussion borrow from an analysis by the maverick sociologist Mike A. Males, whose books challenge media stereotypes about youth problems.
111. See, for example, Males, Framing Youth: Ten Myths About the Next Generation (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage, 1999). I have recalculated the data, using classiWcations that diVer somewhat from those used by Males. Compare Males, "The Myth of the (Black) Teen Suicide Epidemic," posted at www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11149, July 10, 2001;
112. additional data posted at http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/.
113. One revealing fact: the CDC noted that black teen suicides rose most markedly in the South. Males argues that a separate analysis of California's records shows little change over time. California has had a highly professionalized death registration program for years. In contrast, the South was slower to assign this task to medical professionals;
114. in many Southern jurisdictions, the coroner has been an elective oYce, often held by an undertaker.
115. See Males, "The Myth of the (Black) Teen Suicide Epidemic."
116. New York Times reporter Eric Lipton wrote a lengthy series of articles documenting the changing death toll.
117. See, for example, these New York Times articles by Lipton: "Toll from Attack at Trade Center Is Down Sharply," November 21, 2001, p. A1;
118. "In Cold Numbers: A Census of the Sept. 11 Victims," April 19, 2002, p. A14;
119. "Death Toll Is Near 3,000, but Some Uncertainty over the Count Remains," September 11, 2002, p. G47;
120. "Sept. 11 Death Toll Declines as Two People Are Found Alive," November 3, 2002, p. A17.
121. In addition to those killed at the World Trade Center, 184 died in the Pentagon attack and 40 more in the crash of the fourth plane in Pennsylvania, but it was easier to count and identify those other victims. The deaths of the 19 hijackers were also more easily conWrmed.
122. Nina Bernstein, "Thousands of Orphans? An Urban Myth," New York Times, October 26, 2001, p. B1.
123. Dean Baker, ed., Getting Prices Right: The Debate over the Consumer Price Index (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998);
124. Jolie Solomon, "An Economic Speedometer Gets an Overhaul," New York Times, December 23, 2001, sec. 3, p. 4.
125. For example, see Norimitsu Onishi, "African Numbers, Problems, and Number Problems," New York Times, August 18, 2002, sec. 4, p. 5.
126. On the dark Wgure, see Best, Damned Lies and Statistics, pp. 33-34.
127. John M. Berry, "Number Crunchers vs. Recession: Seeking OYcial End, Panel Wrestles with One Stubborn Stat," Washington Post, July 11, 2003, p. E1;
128. Berry, "Recession Ended in November of 2001, But Panel Still Sees Economy Slumping," Washington Post, July 18, 2003, p. E1.
129. James Fallows, "The Early-Decision Racket," Atlantic Monthly 288 (September 2001): 37-52.
130. The formula used in 2002 is explained in Robert J. Morse and Samuel M. Flanigan, "The Rankings," U.S. News & World Report, America's Best Colleges, 2003 Edition, September 2002, pp. 79-81.
131. The classic work on these issues remains Harold L. Wilensky, Organizational Intelligence: Knowledge and Policy in Government and Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1967).
132. The Soviet system has been analyzed in detail;
133. see, for example, Stefan Hedlund, Crisis in Soviet Agriculture (New York: St. Martin's, 1984).
134. Alex Berenson, The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America (New York: Random House, 2003).
135. Mark Fazlollah, Michael Matz, and Craig R. McCoy, "How to Cut City's Crime Rate: Don't Report It," Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1998, p. A1.
136. The Enron scandal promises to generate a huge body of literature. For an early introduction
137. see Loren Fox, Enron: The Rise and Fall (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2003).
138. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1975), p. 55.
139. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2001, Table 411;
140. posted at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d01/dt411.asp.
141. Many observers have oVered competing interpretations of trends in SAT scores. For two diVerent, rather subtle discussions
142. see Scott Menard, "Going Down, Going Up: Explaining the Turnaround in SAT Scores," Youth and Society 20 (1988): 3-28;
143. Charles Murray and R. J. Herrnstein, "What's Really Behind the SAT-Score Decline?" The Public Interest 106 (1992): 32-56.
144. A huge body of literature focuses on recent testing-centered school reforms. For example, generally favorable interpretations may be found in Williamson M. Evers and Herbert J. Walberg, eds., School Accountability (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2002). For a more skeptical analysis
145. see Laura S. Hamilton, Brian M. Stecher, and Stephen P. Klein, Making Sense of Test-Based Accountability in Education (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 2002). On evidence of cheating
146. see Brian A. Jacob and Steven D. Levitt, "To Catch a Cheat," Education Next 4 (Winter 2004): 69-75.
147. Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger, and JeVrey Geppert, "Randomly Accountable," Education Next 2 (Spring 2002): 57-61.
148. Richard J. Lundman and Robert L. Kaufman, "Driving While Black," Criminology 41 (2003): 195-220.
149. Studies of racial proWling are only beginning to appear.
150. See, for example, Robin Shepard Engel, Jennifer M. Cainon, and Thomas J. Bernard, "Theory and Racial ProWling," Justice Quarterly 19 (2002): 249-273;
151. Albert J. Meehan and Michael C. Ponder, "Race and Place: The Ecology of Racial ProWling African American Motorists," Justice Quarterly 19 (2002): 399-430;
152. Michael R. Smith and GeoVrey P. Alpert, "Searching for Direction: Courts, Social Science, and the Adjudication of Racial ProWling Claims," Justice Quarterly 19 (2002): 673-703;
153. Samuel Walker, "Searching for the Denominator," Justice Research and Policy 3 (2001): 63-95.
154. Walker, "Searching for the Denominator," 63-95.
155. On stat wars, see Best, Damned Lies and Statistics, pp. 128-159.
156. On some of the more dubious recent claims to scientiWc status
157. see Robert Park, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
158. For studies of some scientists' eVorts to cling to marginal positions
159. see H. M. Collins, "Surviving Closure: Post-Rejection Adaptation and Plurality in Science," American Sociological Review 65 (2000): 824-845;
160. Bart Simon, Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
161. Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1987).
162. The term came into common usage via Peter W. Huber, Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
163. Marcia Angell, Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case (New York: Norton, 1996).
164. For a conservative manifesto on this theme
165. see Steven J. Milloy, Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2001).
166. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001), p. 265.
167. Colin McMullan and John Eyles, "Risky Business: An Analysis of Claimsmaking in the Development of an Ontario Drinking Water Objective for Tritium," Social Problems 46 (1999): 294-311.
168. A number of recent commentaries have addressed the spinning process.
169. See, for example, George Pitcher, The Death of Spin (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2003);
170. Lynn Smith, "Putting a Spin on the Truth with Statistics and Studies," Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2001, p. E1.
171. D'Vera Cohn, "Married-With-Children Still Fading; Census Finds Americans Living Alone in 25% of Households," Washington Post, May 15, 2001, p. A1.
172. Compare Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York: Houghton MiZin, 2001), pp. 239-243;
173. Douglas J. Besharov, "Growing Overweight and Obesity in America: The Potential Role of Federal Nutrition Programs," testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (American Enterprise Institute, 2003).
174. Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, eds., Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001), p. 248.
175. The best overview of the competing estimates is Tom W. Smith, "The Muslim Population of the United States: The Methodology of Estimates," Public Opinion Quarterly 66 (2002): 404-417. For examples of the critiques oVered by rivals in this debate
176. see Bill Broadway, "Number of U.S. Muslims Depends on Who's Counting," Washington Post, November 26, 2001, p. A1.
177. Calvin Goldscheider, "Are American Jews Vanishing Again?" Contexts 2 (Winter 2003), pp. 18-24. On the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey
178. see Daniel J. Wakin, "Survey of U.S. Jews Sees a Dip; Others Demur," New York Times, October 9, 2002, p. A23.
179. A growing literature provides various interpretations of the consequences of welfare reform. For overviews oVering a range of viewpoints
180. see Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis, "Welfare Reform-Four Years Later," The Public Interest 140 (2000): 17-35;
181. Christopher Jencks, "Liberal Lessons from Welfare Reform," The American Prospect (Special Supplement, Summer 2002): A9-A12;
182. Sanford F. Schram and Joe Soss, "Success Stories: Welfare Reform, Policy Discourse, and the Politics of Research," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 577 (2001): 49-65.
183. Sam Dillon, "Report Finds Deep Poverty Is on the Rise," New York Times, April 30, 2003, p. A18.