Lying is Bad
The idea that lying is bad is surprisingly controversial these days. Many people now treat lying as if it were a bit of an ethical minus (easily overridden by other concerns), without serious practical consequences. But lying, even when it can be ethically justified, has serious practical consequences. I might or might not be OK with you misleading others, but I am unlikely to be OK with you misleading me. Exceptions to that rule do exist, but they are uncommon.
What that means is that, regardless of how well you think you can justify lying ethically, you might get only one or two shots at successfully deceiving people, so you had better carefully save up those very limited opportunities.
In line with the last paragraph, for those who bristle at my use of the word “lying” in this post, let me define “lying” for my purposes here as anything you say that—if a listener came to know the whole truth later on—would make them trust your words less thereafter.
What has happened in public affairs over my lifetime is that those in power have lied quite freely, leading people to trust them less and less. Fortunately, there are some people I still trust not to lie too much. For example, still to this day I think the typical rank-and-file economist and the typical rank-and-file lab scientist will tell me the truth about what they found scientifically about narrow questions, other than some statistical fudging that is predictable enough that I can adjust for it. (I inveigh against that statistical fudging in “Let's Set Half a Percent as the Standard for Statistical Significance” and “Adding a Variable Measured with Error to a Regression Only Partially Controls for that Variable.” Also see “Adam McCloskey and Pascal Michaillat: Calculating Incentive Compatible Critical Values Points to a t-Statistic of 3 as the 5% Critical Value after Accounting for p-Hacking.”)
However, when it comes to interpretations of data behind recommendations made to the general public, I have very little confidence that those in power will tell me what they actually believe as opposed to what was decided by some highly politicized committee as the particular way they should try to shade things to get me to do what they want me to do.
Before I get more specific, let me admit up front that I will focus my ire on those from whom I expect better behavior. There are others in public life who lie so often, in such varied ways, that I have gotten used to it, and my anger that once burned hot about their lying has to some degree burned itself out.
In the area of diet and health, those in power still won’t tell the hoi polloi forthrightly just how bad the evidence suggests sugar is.
In the area of fighting global warming, they won’t tell the hoi polloi forthrightly which policy measures will have a big effect and which will only have a token effect, and are eager to pretend there is a unanimity of evidence behind the appropriately governing mainstream view instead of the reality that the appropriately governing mainstream view (of magnitude of effects as well as direction) is only based on a preponderance of evidence.
In economic policy, rather than focusing on their cogent arguments that are politically less convenient, politicians are happy to call on voters’ economic misconceptions when it favors their policies. Paul Rubin’s October 5, 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed “The Woke Left’s Primitive Economics” and letters responding to it give a decent rundown of some of these misconceptions.
From the op-ed itself, here is one aspect of people’s economic misconceptions:
Folk economics is the economics of people untrained in economics. It is the economic view of the world that evolved in our brains before the development of the modern economy. During this period of evolution the economy was simple, with little specialization except by age and sex, no economic growth, no technological change, limited trade, little capital, and warfare between neighboring tribes.
Zero-sum thinking was well-adapted to this world. Since there was no economic growth, incomes and wealth didn’t grow. If one person had access to more food or other goods, or greater access to females, it was likely because of expropriation from others.
Paul Rubin also notes in the op-ed that “Frequent warfare encouraged xenophobia,” and then goes on to be very partisan in saying that our primitive xenophobia is called on in identity politics without making the obvious point that our primitive xenophobia is also called on in attacks on immigration.
(John Wight’s letter in response to Paul Rubin’s op-ed is fascinating, though somewhat off-topic for this post. He writes:
Paul Rubin writes about the zero-sum thinking of the left and primitive societies. I noticed this attitude while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America: If the pie is not equally divided, those with a bigger slice got theirs from someone else’s share.
…
… there are two negative aspects to this zero-sum, peasant attitude, beyond those identified by Mr. Rubin. First, there is enormous social pressure not to succeed, because if you do, you are taking some one else’s share. The corollary is that if you are successful, try to hide it …
Second, if you prosper, your neighbors will think you are a crook. So, why not be one? I can’t prove it, but I think this accounts for some of the corruption endemic to underdeveloped societies.
He also mentions that an upside is pro-equality attitudes.)
Finally for this post, in the area of pandemic policy, there has been a lot of shading of the reading of evidence in order to manipulate the public. To address this issue, let me draw first on Gary Saul Morson’s op-ed “Partisan Science in America.”
Early on, when masks were scarce, instead of saying “Masks are helpful but right now we need to save them for medical workers,” those in power talked as if it was unclear that masks were helpful. On that, Gary Saul Morson writes:
Dr. Fauci admitted that he first stated that masks were ineffective in part because there was a shortage of masks and he wanted to preserve them for medical workers, who needed them most. He doesn’t seem to have considered: Once he shades the truth for a reason of policy, why shouldn’t reasonable people assume his other statements are based on policy considerations rather than science?
Decisions about lockdowns were represented as being clear from natural science, when at a minimum they involved economics to evaluate tradeoffs, as well as values questions involving ethical philosophy to choose the objective function. Gary writes:
When President Biden, or a politician from any part of the political spectrum, claims he is only “following the science,” one can be sure that he isn’t. Should we lock down? Lockdowns, like any other policy, entail costs as well as benefits. How do we weigh them? Not by epidemiology, which has nothing to say about the costs to children, small businesses, performing artists and human enjoyment generally. Science can inform a policy decision, but whatever judgment one makes, it cannot be based wholly on the science.
On the issue of boosters, let me point you to one of my tweets:
And early on, for rankly political reasons, epidemiologists prematurely (and with substantial probability wrongly) rejected the idea that the coronavirus behind Covid-19 might have originated in a Chinese lab. Gary writes:
It is now regarded as an open question whether the Covid virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But when the virus first appeared, dozens of scientists published a statement in the Lancet expressing “solidarity” with Chinese colleagues. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins,” the statement declared. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
Gary Saul Morson also has these more general comments to make about how science works and why lying is bad. I add bullets to separate different passages:
Scientists don’t experience divine revelations, they propose hypotheses that they and others test. This rigorous process of testing gives science the persuasiveness that mere journalism lacks. If a scientific periodical expels editors or peer reviewers because they don’t accept some prevailing theory, that process has been short-circuited. Those who call for such expulsions have missed the whole point of how science works. They are the true deniers, far more dangerous to science than a religious fundamentalist who believes the world is 6,000 years old.
When researchers fear losing a grant or being subject to personal attack if they question a predominant belief, that belief no longer rests on scientific grounds.
By the end of the Soviet Union, almost no one trusted government statements about natural disasters or man-made catastrophes like Chernobyl. How will we handle the next crisis about which scientific understanding has something to contribute when scientists are known to base statements on policy preferences? That is part of the cost of the Lancet scientists’ accusation and of Dr. Fauci’s lack of candor.
In addition to people feeling OK in lying to further their preferred politics or policies, there is always the danger that politics will cloud people’s judgment in the first place. I worry that was the case for a “whistleblower” who significantly delayed our utilization of the very helpful anti-Covid drug molnupiravir. The story is in Alyssia Finley’s October 10, 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed “Who Slowed Merck’s Covid Remedy.”
Here is Alyssia’s account of what happened when Rick Bright was demoted for opposing a fast-tracking of this promising, though still unproven, anti-Covid drug:
Mr. Bright then filed a complaint accusing Trump officials of pressuring him to fast-track unsafe drugs and award contracts “based on political connections and cronyism.”
He claimed that even before the pandemic, they were inappropriately pressing Barda to fund clinical studies of molnupiravir, which had shown promise against other viruses in lab experiments at Emory University. Mr. Bright’s complaint alleged that George Painter, CEO of Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory, and Trump HHS official Robert Kadlec had urged Barda in November 2019 to “invest millions of dollars into their ‘miracle cure.’ ” It noted that “similar experimental drugs in this class had been shown to cause reproductive toxicity in animals, and offspring from treated animals had been born without teeth and without parts of their skulls.” But similar effects hadn’t occurred with molnupiravir.
If a Hillary Clinton administration had urged the fast-tracking of the same drug, with the same scientific evidence at the time of decision, would Rick Bright have opposed it? And to the extent that he had reason to expect skullduggery that an investigation concluded wasn’t there in this instance, was it because of frequent lies by high officials in other contexts, that were especially suspicious to Rick Bright in those who were politically other?