The Malleable Nature of Facts

Election years are tough on science and numbers. Everywhere you go yet another politician or one of their supporters is citing numbers, throwing them out there, claiming their support, and reminding everyone that if we just followed the evidence we’d all end up agreeing with them. Their opponents, of course, claim the same thing. This is bad enough in formal debates, but when you wade in to Facebook or Twitter, it gets downright overwhelming. Everyone has “science on their side” or “the numbers back them up.”