How to Mislead With Statistics

New York algebra fact of the day ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/new-york-fact-of-the-day-2.html

Take here in New York, where in 2016 the passing rate for the Regents Examination in Algebra I test was 72 percent. Unfortunately, this (relatively) higher rate of success does not indicate some sort of revolutionary pedagogy on the part of New York state educators. As the New York Post complained in 2017, passing rates were so high in large measure because the cutoff for passing was absurdly low — so low that students needed only to answer 31.4 percent of the questions correctly to pass the 2017 exam.

Walter A. Williams:  The Nation's Report Card
How are K-12 schools doing under President Trump versus President Obama?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/05/06/the-nations-report-card-n2568167?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/06/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

Jensen's Comment
Most K-12 schools were probably doing better when I was a child than they're doing today. The downhill slide is greatest in the gang-ridden schools, drug-infested urban schools like Chicago and New Orleans. Throwing money at such schools is not the answer until life at home recovers. Finland knows this, which is why Finland's dads spend more time with school children than the moms or the teachers.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/04/finland-only-country-world-dad-more-time-kids-moms

Current and past editions of my blog called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Phishing Scam --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

How to avoid COVID-19 phishing scams ---
https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2020/may/avoid-coronavirus-phishing-scams.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=22May2020

The rapid rollout of the Paycheck Protection Program raises fraud risk, government watchdog finds  ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/25/fast-rollout-of-the-paycheck-protection-program-raises-fraud-risk-gao.html
Accountants caught with their internal controls down

Virus unleashes wave of fraud in US amid fear and scarcity ---
https://apnews.com/f7ab8d9f968905498cb3b31c9c753b1e

Where Were the Internal Controls:  The German fintech firm is reeling after its auditors said that around $2 billion cash had gone missing ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/wirecard-ceo-resigns-amid-fraud-scandal-share-crash-2020-6

SEC doles out record $50 million to whistleblower, pushing program total above $500 million ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/sec-record-millions-whistleblower-award-program-total-payment-amount-payout-2020-6-1029282473

Federal prosecutors charged a Chinese manufacturer with exporting nearly a half million masks to the U.S. that falsely purported to be N95 respirators ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-files-charges-against-chinese-n95-mask-maker-11591395929?mod=djemCFO

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on June 24, 2020

A distressed energy-trading company overstated its assets by more than $3 billion using “routine and pervasive” forgery, while its founder oversaw years of disastrous bets on oil derivatives, a report filed with a Singapore court said.

Journal Retracts Study Debunking Hydroxychloroquine ---
https://www.ozy.com/presidential-daily-brief/pdb-337486/?utm_term=OZY&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PDB%20%282020-06-05%2010:34:26%29#article337492

Prognosis: Yikes. On May 22, British medical journal The Lancet published a Harvard study that found not only does the malaria drug not help treat COVID-19, it’s associated with higher mortality rates. Alarmed, the World Health Organization paused trials of the drug. But now the journal has retracted the study at the request of three of its authors, who expressed concerns about the quality of the data — and Surgisphere, the company that provided it, has refused to transfer the full dataset. The retraction could fuel supporters of hydroxychloroquine like President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Australian scientists have savaged the international mess over a Harvard study of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a disastrous setback in the search for COVID-19 treatments that will scare off patients and undermine trust in good science ---
https://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-not-how-science-works-major-setback-in-the-search-for-covid-19-treatment-20200605-p54zxi.html

Australian scientists have savaged the international mess over a study of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a disastrous setback in the search for COVID-19 treatments that will scare off patients and undermine trust in good science.

On Friday, the World Health Organisation restarted its trial of hydroxychloroquine after The Lancet medical journal spectacularly retracted a research paper that reported the drug was associated with a 35 per cent increased risk of serious cardiac side effects.

 

The study’s authors said they could no longer vouch for the veracity of its data, following repeated concerns raised about the methods of the US data collection company Surgisphere.

The Lancet editor, Dr Richard Horton described the fiasco as "a shocking example of research misconduct in the middle of a global health emergency” to The Guardian.

 

Despite the retraction, British scientists on Friday halted their own large-scale hydroxychloroquine trial after initial results showed no evidence of benefit.

"We reviewed the data and concluded there is no evidence of a beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised with COVID, and decided to stop enrolling patients to the hydroxychloroquine arm with immediate effect," said Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the so-called RECOVERY trial.

"This is not a treatment for COVID-19. It doesn't work. This result should change medical practice worldwide. We can now stop using a drug that is useless."

In Australia, Health Minister Greg Hunt announced $170,000 to fund hydroxychloroquine research at Queensland University of Technology, the Doherty Institute has resumed recruiting COVID-19 patients for its hydroxychloroquine ASCOT trial, and the Walter Eliza Hall Institute’s SHIELD trial has continued to test the prophylactic effects of the drug in healthcare workers.

 

 

Mr Hunt said Australia is taking cautious steps to consider a range of different therapies and treatments and "we'll continue with our programs".

But the damage had been considerable, said SHIELD trial lead investigator Professor Marc Pellegrini.

“We are diverting valuable resources to mitigate the fall-out of this scandalous Lancet paper,” he said.

“This is incredibly damaging when we need to be moving very fast. The greatest damage is to science itself.”

Dr Gaetan Burgio, head of an infectious diseases lab at the Australian National University, said it is “an absolute disaster” to be focused on an observational trial of limited value that has distracted from the gold-standard randomised controlled trials to find an effective treatment for COVID-19.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if [trial investigators] have a lot of trouble recruiting patients as a result of this,” Dr Burgio said.

Continued in article

What Is Dropshipping, and Is It a Scam? ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/667846/what-is-dropshipping-and-is-it-a-scam/

Secret Service unearths Nigerian fraud ring stealing hundreds of millions in unemployment benefits ---
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/498160-secret-service-unearths-overseas-fraud-ring-stealing-millions-in-unemployment

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on June 4, 2020

A former United Auto Workers president pleaded guilty to embezzlement of union funds and racketeering, marking the highest-profile conviction yet in the government’s yearslong investigation into labor corruption within the auto industry.

Journal Retracts Hydroxychloroquine Study ---
https://www.ozy.com/presidential-daily-brief/pdb-337486/?utm_term=OZY&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PDB%20%282020-06-05%2010:34:26%29#article337492

Prognosis: Yikes. On May 22, British medical journal The Lancet published a Harvard study that found not only does the malaria drug not help treat COVID-19, it’s associated with higher mortality rates. Alarmed, the World Health Organization paused trials of the drug. But now the journal has retracted the study at the request of three of its authors, who expressed concerns about the quality of the data — and Surgisphere, the company that provided it, has refused to transfer the full dataset. The retraction could fuel supporters of hydroxychloroquine like President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Walter E. Williams:  Fixing College Corruption ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/04/15/fixing-college-corruption-n2566832?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=04/15/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

America's colleges are rife with corruption. The financial squeeze resulting from COVID-19 offers opportunities for a bit of remediation. Let's first examine what might be the root of academic corruption, suggested by the title of a recent study, "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship." The study was done by Areo, an opinion and analysis digital magazine. By the way, Areo is short for Areopagitica, a speech delivered by John Milton in defense of free speech.

Authors Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian say that something has gone drastically wrong in academia, especially within certain fields within the humanities. They call these fields "grievance studies," where scholarship is not so much based upon finding truth but upon attending to social grievances. Grievance scholars bully students, administrators and other departments into adhering to their worldview. The worldview they promote is neither scientific nor rigorous. Grievance studies consist of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, gender studies, queer, sexuality and critical race studies.

In 2017 and 2018, authors Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian started submitting bogus academic papers to academic journals in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat and sexuality studies to determine if they would pass peer review and be accepted for publication. Acceptance of dubious research that journal editors found sympathetic to their intersectional or postmodern leftist vision of the world proves the problem of low academic standards.

Several of the fake research papers were accepted for publication. The Fat Studies journal published a hoax paper that argued the term bodybuilding was exclusionary and should be replaced with "fat bodybuilding, as a fat-inclusive politicized performance." One reviewer said, "I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article and believe it has an important contribution to make to the field and this journal." "Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism," was accepted for publication by Affilia, a feminist journal for social workers. The paper consisted in part of a rewritten passage from Mein Kampf. Two other hoax papers were published, including "Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks." This paper's subject was dog-on-dog rape. But the dog rape paper eventually forced Boghossian, Pluckrose and Lindsay to prematurely out themselves. A Wall Street Journal writer had figured out what they were doing.

Some papers accepted for publication in academic journals advocated training men like dogs and punishing white male college students for historical slavery by asking them to sit in silence in the floor in chains during class and to be expected to learn from the discomfort. Other papers celebrated morbid obesity as a healthy life choice and advocated treating privately conducted masturbation as a form of sexual violence against women. Typically, academic journal editors send submitted papers out to referees for review. In recommending acceptance for publication, many reviewers gave these papers glowing praise.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who let students cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoFabricate

Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor

Current and past editions of my blog called Fraud Updates --- 
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Some Frauds Are More Sickening Than Others:  39 million masks for California hospitals that never materialized spark federal investigation ---
https://ktla.com/news/california/39-million-masks-for-california-hospitals-that-never-materialized-spark-federal-investigation/

Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office being charged with knowingly withholding key evidence from the trial judge. Ultimately over 35,000 convictions were overturned ---
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/30/netflix-spotlights-mass-lab-debacle-in-how-to-fix-a-drug-scandal/ 

The Coronavirus Truthers Don't Believe in Public Health ---
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxevj5/the-coronavirus-truthers-dont-believe-in-public-health

Zombie papers: Why do papers by the most prolific fraudster in history keep getting cited?
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/04/01/zombie-papers-why-do-papers-by-the-most-prolific-fraudster-in-history-keep-getting-cited/

Racist Threats and Attacks that Rattled a California University Campus Were Faked, Police Say ---
https://www.newsweek.com/racist-threats-attacks-that-rattled-california-university-campus-were-faked-police-say-1497533

Youth Football Coach Set Up After-School Programs to Bilk Medicaid Out of Millions of Dollars ---
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/health-care-fraud-ring-busted-051320

Editors of Ethnologia Europaea announce the retractions of seven more papers by Mart Bax, the Dutch anthropologist whose misconduct includes not only making up data but making up papers — at least 61 of them ---
https://ee.openlibhums.org/article/id/1801/

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize

Fraudster "Billionaire" Kylie Jenner --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylie_Jenner#Forbes_cover

Forbes cover Jenner appeared on the cover of the August 2018 issue of Forbes. They estimated that she had a net worth of $900 million, and that she was on the verge of becoming the youngest "self-made" billionaire. This would beat out Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire at age 23. However, the publication's use of the term "self-made" sparked widespread criticism and jokes online. Critics argued that Jenner was already born into fame and fortune. The Dictionary.com Twitter handle cheekily defined the term "self-made." Comedian Fat Jew started a GoFundMe page to help Kylie Jenner earn another $100 million so that she would officially become a billionaire. Comedian Michelle Wolf had a viral stand-up comedy act related to how Jenner earned her fame and success. Some discussions took a more serious tone, with journalists writing pieces on wealth distribution, inequality and inheritance, as well as upward mobility in society. However, celebrities such as Jenner's half-sister Kim Kardashian and socialite Paris Hilton have come out and defended Jenner, legitimizing assertions that she is indeed self-made, while Hilton also described herself as self-made.[131][132] Jenner responded that "The self-made thing is true ... My parents told me I needed to make my own money, it's time to learn how to save and spend your own money, stuff like that. What I'm trying to say is, I did have a platform, but none of my money is inherited". In May 2020, however, Forbes released a statement accusing Jenner of forging tax documents so she would appear as a billionaire. The publication also accused her of fabricating revenue figures for Kylie Cosmetics.

Kylie Jenner is reportedly no longer a billionaire, and Forbes says she likely showed it fake tax returns: 'It's clear that Kylie's camp has been lying' ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/kylie-jenner-no-longer-a-billionaire-according-to-forbes-2020-5

How to Mislead With Statistics

The Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Social Security is Not Based Upon What Senior Citizens Buy

Social Security beneficiaries might not receive much of a cost-of-living adjustment next year — and some say recipients might not get anything at all.

COLA is linked to the consumer-price index, which has suffered lately because of low oil prices. Based on the CPI data between January and April of this year, COLA for next year would be zero, according to Mary Johnson, a Social Security policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League. There are still five months until the administration announces the COLA for 2021, which occurs in October. The adjustment in 2020 was considered minimal, at 1.6% this year, down from 2.8% in 2019. COLAs have averaged 1.4% over the last decade, down from the average 3% it was between 2000 and 2009.

. . .

The problem: Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment is linked to the consumer-price index for urban workers. There’s another subset of CPI, known as CPI-E, which tracks elderly spending. The difference is primarily in health care and housing. Those expenses, including Medicare premiums and homeowners’ insurance, grow rapidly year over year, but benefit adjustments don’t reflect that growth.

The coronavirus crisis could deepen the divide, especially as medical expenses drop in some areas — such as elective surgeries — but increase in others, including care for COVID-19 patients. “Older people are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis, often due to underlying medical conditions,” Johnson said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as other leading figures, have urged older Americans to stay home and away from others as they are typically at a higher risk of complications from contracting the virus.

 

Annual average out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs were $1,102 in January 2000 and $3,875.76 in January 2020, according to the study — a 252% increase. Medicare Part B premiums jumped 218% during the same time frame, and home heating oil grew 172% during that period. Even the price of oranges grew more than double, from $0.61 in 2000 to $1.34 in 2020, a 120% increase. A retiree in 2000 with an average benefit of $816 a month would have $1,246.20 in 2020, but would need $380 more a month just to maintain that same level of buying power she had in 2000.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The 800-lb gorilla in all of this is what will happen to nursing home pricing and other long-term care nursing prices not covered by Medicare? Nursing home expenses are going through the roof as nursing homes adapt to the risks of the pandemic and increased attention given to nursing homes by regulators. It's pretty safe to predict that already very high nursing home prices in the USA are going to take another leap upward. There will be increases in Medicare fraud as heirs try to siphon off estate assets years early in order to get loved ones onto Medicaid that covers nursing home care for "poor people." Increased costs of Medicaid coverage is the most serious expense rise for our beleaguered state budgets.

Nursing home pricing trends 2004-2019 ---
https://www.genworth.com/aging-and-you/finances/cost-of-care/cost-of-care-trends-and-insights.html