Kevin Lewis: lies, damned lies, statistics and the internet

It may or may not be true that everything you read (or post) on a website or in social media is not wholly supported by fact, discovers Kevin Lewis. Or then again, it might be.

It may or may not be true that everything you read (or post) on a website or social media is not wholly supported by fact, discovers Kevin Lewis. Or then again, it might be.

I wouldn’t claim to be a mediaeval scholar, but I like to think that I know the difference between a mendacium and a falsiloquium. The former is a 24-carat lie which the speaker knows to be dishonourable or even harmful, whereas the latter is a ‘noble lie’ intended to be kind or achieve some other good, positive end.

Even mediaeval courtiers must have asked the time-honoured question: ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

So the concept of ‘fibbing’ as a category of untruth which is somehow distinct from lying isn’t entirely new. The word itself can be traced back to at least the 17th century, and a line in one of the many plays written by writer and poet John Dryden. ‘I do not say he lyes…but his Lordship fibbes most abominably.’

The implication has always been that ‘telling fibs’ isn’t the same as lying. Respected dictionaries variously describe a ‘fib’ as a minor, trivial or inconsequential untruth or statement intended to deceive, but otherwise of an innocent or relatively harmless nature.

Sandpaper

Some people – notably, but not exclusively politicians – acquire a reputation for turning fibbing into a way of life, if not an actual art form.

In recent times, Donald Trump would have been the undisputed nominee for the Nobel Prize for fibbing, had one been on offer, although Tony Blair and George W Bush might have run him close a few years earlier.

Another legendary lifetime fibber, Boris Johnson, was unceremoniously shown the door by The Times as long ago as the late 1980s, after he was found to have made up quotes when putting together a current affairs article, long before he entered politics. Some time later, he conceded that he had ‘mildly sandpapered something somebody said’.

In the case of the Trumpmeister, he regularly sandpapers things that he himself said or wrote, as well as the utterances (and tweets) of others. A prominent US media outlet reported a single day in which Trump placed 120 blatant untruths into the public domain while in office as the US President, but here I may even be falling into the same trap of reporting and sharing unsubstantiated (albeit believable) hearsay.

And that is precisely the point. A lot of today’s communications media is instant, real-time, unfiltered, mostly unaccountable and usually unattributable ‘noise’. It’s not just that other people don’t know whether it’s genuine, they don’t really care one way or the other.

You choose who to follow and ‘like’, precisely because confirmation bias is so intoxicating and addictive.

‘Relying upon unreliable information’

Most social media posts are attractively and conveniently packaged and delivered in manageable chunks, so it’s easily digested. You can read 10 pieces of nonsense in the time it would take to read a single piece of solid sense.

So the content can be created – and more importantly, shared with many people – incredibly quickly without much effort or the inconvenience of validating facts.

Opinion spun in huge volumes quickly trumps fact (forgive the pun) and replaces validated truth and reliable information from any isolated or individual sources, however authoritative, independent and/or reliable they are. Our thoughts and actions are guided by total (and often, virtual) strangers.

Perhaps that explains how the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey recently found himself embarrassed and on the back foot after using his platform in the House of Commons to demand an explanation and public apology from Rishi Sunak, regarding a grandmother who had collapsed and died at the entrance to A&E, after being forced to drive herself there and even pay for parking.

When the facts were examined more closely, it turns out that almost every detail in this sad story was incorrect and misleadingly presented to parliament. The official Liberal Democrat line was that Sir Ed had simply been inadvertently misinformed about the alleged events and hadn’t had time to check them out.

Rather like Blair and Bush over weapons of mass destruction, or Boris over partygate, or Sturgeon and Murrell’s exaggeration of SNP membership numbers, or Ed Davey’s recent fairytale, relying upon unreliable information is fast becoming a default get-out-of-jail justification for a fib. Or more insidiously perhaps, a lie?

The lost art of sword-falling

Five years ago this very month, Amber Rudd resigned as home secretary, saying she ‘inadvertently misled’ MPs over the existence of targets for removing illegal immigrants. In her resignation letter, Rudd said she took ‘full responsibility’ for the fact she was not aware of ‘information provided to (her) office which makes mention of targets’.

Irrespective of the ‘a week is a long time in politics’ truism, I’m left thinking that a lot appears to have changed in the past five years, and not necessarily for the better.

The much-quoted epithet that there are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics – is so brilliant that it’s unsurprising so many variations of it appeared in the 1880-90s. Everyone wanted to claim a slice of the reflected admiration, it seems – and why wouldn’t they?

One of my favourites is said to have been popular in the legal corridors of Lincoln’s Inn. ‘There are three kinds of liars: the common or garden liar, the damnable liar and the expert witness.’

Prior to that, ‘It has been wittily remarked that there are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a “fib”, the second is a downright lie, and the third and most aggravated is statistics.’

It matters little who said what and when, but the direction of travel over time is revealing and highly relevant in the context of UK society and UK dentistry today.

In the landmark Montgomery (Consent) case, even the UK Supreme Court warned that genuine understanding of risks and likely success rates in healthcare isn’t always assisted by statistics and percentages, and indeed they can actively mislead, and impede understanding.

Blurred boundaries

Put simply, the GDC has a decision to make. Is it happy to let the public decide for itself whether the statements and claims being made by some dentists about dental matters are innocent, trivial marketing hype within the boundaries of acceptability – or are they fibs, lies or even damnable lies?

Are they calculated to inform, or to mislead, deceive and misinform? Are the rave reviews on the practice website, Trustpilot or other feedback portals always quite what they seem? And if not, what is their true provenance – and do they really serve the public interest at all?

It took me little time and effort to find exactly the same, incredibly fulsome, favourable review of a dental patient’s experience, identical in both words and punctuation, on three different practice websites, these practices being 250 miles apart.

Either the patient in question has a bicycle, or something is rotten in the state of Denmark (as Marcellus famously observes in Hamlet). Maybe the same spurious feedback is being used by practices and digital marketing consultants in Denmark too? The fact that the dental regulator in Australia has long recognised and defined the concept of ‘purported’ (invented) feedback tells you how far off the pace the GDC now appears.

Overdue for an update

Its published guidance on professional conduct Standards for the Dental Team, and much of the supplementary guidance, is overdue for an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century, especially where information and communications technology is concerned.

Other regulators around the world are light years ahead of the GDC in recognising the potential dangers of social media and other new media formats, and the dearth of effective controls over deceptive and misleading advertorial dressed up as public information and the constructive assurance of choice.

Are patients simply consumers, or do we owe them more than that?

We rush unthinking to embrace the new and rubbish the lessons of history at our peril. Every successive generation has fallen into the same trap since time began, and will continue to do so, although I would venture to suggest that today’s traps are very different and much more difficult to navigate and manage.

The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art was a prominent, albeit London-centric, newspaper for about 75 years and featured some very prominent contributors in its heyday. In 1885, it observed: ‘Brag is bad, but fibs are worse. And a mixture of brag and fibs is worst of all.’

Prescient or what? I wonder whether the GDC would consider adopting those same sentiments when redrafting Standards for the Dental Team, and when interpreting its own performance statistics. Recent responses and public statements from the GDC have been quite defensive regarding its fitness to practise and interim orders statistics.

They must mean only what the GDC wants them to mean, it would seem, and anyone with a different interpretation is wrong. If you can believe that, you can believe anything.

Kevin Lewis – lies, damned lies and statistics (and the internet)