A couple weeks ago we talked about the problem of scientists writing things that they know are false but not thinking about it as lying. The examples I gave were:
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– A paper on the cumulative effects of violent video games that was described in its title as “long-term” but actually was conducted over 3 days. Not long-term at all.
– A paper that had in its abstract: “That a person can, by assuming two simple 1-min poses, embody power and instantly become more powerful has real-world, actionable implications,” even though it had no evidence of anyone actually becoming more powerful.
As I wrote at the time, what bothers me isn’t so much that the wrapping of these papers didn’t accurately describe their content, so much as it seemed pretty clear that the authors involved never even saw the problem.
It’s not just scientists who say things that there’s no way they believe. Recall this amazing court testimony from “Kenneth Ludmerer, M.D., a Washington University professor of medicine and medical history, who had a sideline in consulting for the cigarette industry:
Ludmerer made this statement in 2002. At some level, ya gotta admire someone who’s willing to make a statement that will make him appear to outsiders as either a liar or a fool. Ludmerer reportedly received over half a million dollars for his testimony, but I can’t believe he needed the money. Cost of living in St. Louis is, like, nothing, and I have a feeling Wash U. already pays him pretty well.
It seems that, just like the scientists quoted in part 1 of this post, Ludmerer felt he was playing by the rules. It was ok for him to say something that was obviously untrue, because . . . ummm, because that’s what people do, I guess.
Interlude: Reckless disregard for the truth
In my post, I asked what do you call it when someone is lying but they’re doing it in such a socially-acceptable way that nobody ever calls them on it? Some commenters suggested the term “bullshit,” but that didn’t quite seem right to me, because these people seemed pretty deliberate in their factual misstatements. I’m going with commenter Raphael’s suggestion, “reckless disregard for the truth.” The “disregard for the truth” part is obvious; the “reckless” is because someone might actually read the title or abstract of your paper or hear your testimony and take it seriously.
3. Cops
This story was reported all over, for example here’s Ezra Klein in the New York Times:
The Department of Homeland Security says Lander was “arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer,” a lie so brazen, given that this is all on tape for everyone to see, that it makes the whole episode even more chilling.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander . . . was detained outside a New York courtroom as he pressed immigration officers to present an arrest warrant for a man they were taking into custody. Video from the scene shows Lander attempting to stay in physical contact with the immigrant being detained until the officers forcibly took him into custody. . . . the Department of Homeland Security announced that Lander would also be charged with “assaulting law enforcement.” . . . a review of the video of the incident makes it hard to imagine why assault charges were even on the table. Lander — literally and aesthetically the city’s accountant — assaulted the officers in the sense that a bully might accuse you of having gotten in the way of his fist.
And what about that bit where the cop was hiding his face under a ski mask?
Bump looks into the matter in an article entitled, “Parsing ICE’s mixed-up, hard-to-believe assault claims”:
Last month, I [Bump] wrote a column questioning why Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were increasingly disguising their identities as they conducted sweeps and arrests. One obvious answer was that they hoped to avoid accountability for their actions. . . .
The acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, took the time to respond to my column in a letter to this newspaper. He lamented my allegedly having disparaged his officers during National Police Week, insisting that officers were covering their faces for their own safety. He noted that a man in Texas faced criminal charges for threatening ICE officers and claimed that “ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.”
So what happened? Bump continues:
Given that it is no longer National Police Week, I assume Mr. Lyons will have no objection to my digging into his claims a bit more robustly.
I [Bump] emailed ICE multiple times asking where the 413 percent claim came from and whether there were news reports about the assaults it was tallying. I got no response, so I endeavored to figure out where the figures came from myself.
We should begin by noting that the 413 percent figure — mentioned in a DHS social media post about Lander on Tuesday — has been deployed by DHS since early May. In a post from mid-April, the figure was 300 percent, suggesting that some recalculation had been undertaken. If that’s the case, though, either the number of assaults since early May has been steady or DHS hasn’t bothered to update the figure even as their officers have been deployed much more broadly in an effort to increase immigrant arrests.
Here I will point out that Customs and Border Protection offers monthly data on the number of assaults on its officers. The year-to-date total is 20 percent lower than it was in 2024.
I was able to find Justice Department and DHS news releases documenting a number of assaults against ICE officers since January — assaults targeting 12 individuals. . . . For context, ICE announced in April that it had conducted 66,463 arrests since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
Importantly, most of the assaults documented with indictments or news releases occurred as immigrants were being detained. One officer was elbowed in the face; two others were injured when a target’s vehicle struck their own as he was trying to escape. Considered along with the assaults that occurred at ICE facilities, you will notice a pattern: Officers hiding their identities wouldn’t have done anything to prevent the assaults from occurring. . . .
Again, no assault on law enforcement is warranted nor are threats against law enforcement. It is also undoubtedly the case that there have been assaults against immigration officers that have not been publicly reported or where criminal charges are pending.
That said, we should not and cannot take ICE’s representations about the need for its officers to obscure their identities at face value. That the organization would not provide evidence for its claims, that it has been eager to level dubious charges against Democratic legislators and that it conflates assaults of officers engaged in official acts with putative threats to them personally all diminishes the extent to which we should grant ICE the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s another news article, this one by Sam Adams, talking about the toxic stew produced by mixing reckless disregard for the truth with a lack of consequences even for demonstrated lies:
Allowing agents to mask indiscriminately doesn’t just protect them; it also risks emboldening them to stretch the boundaries of the law. We’re already aware of the risk of allowing law enforcement agents to act anonymously–that’s why police officers have badge numbers. . . .
After Lander was arrested (he was released later in the afternoon), DHS official Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement accusing him of “assaulting law enforcement.” This echoed the incident last week when California Sen. Alex Padilla was thrown to the ground and handcuffed after he’d shouted out his name and attempted to ask Kristi Noem a question during a press conference. DHS accused of him of “lung[ing]” toward Noem, despite numerous videos showing that he did nothing of the sort.
I assume that the government official who described Lander as assaulting law enforcement even though he didn’t assault law enforcement will experience the same consequences as the researcher who described a 3-day study as long term and the doctor–the professor of medicine!–who said he had “no opinion” on whether cigarette smoking contributes to the development of lung cancer in human beings. Those consequences being: some people criticize them in the press and social media (as here!), and . . . that’s all!
4a. Why do they do it?
One reason to lie is that you don’t have good arguments on your side. Or, maybe you have ok arguments on your side, but not good enough. So if you add some fake evidence, it makes your case stronger.
Saying you did a 3-day study of video games, that’s not so impressive. “Long term” sounds much better. Sure, you have to mislead, but it makes your case stronger!
Saying that, yeah, everybody knows that smoking causes lung cancer but you still think people should have the freedom to promote cigarette sales however they want, that doesn’t sound so good. Saying that you, as a medical-school processor, have no opinion on whether cigarette smoking contributes to the development of lung cancer in human beings–that’s pretty impressive! I can only assume he didn’t believe it–i.e., he was lying–but that’s secondary to his goal of making a strong case.
Saying that you sent masked officers to arrest some opposition-party politicians who were at no point posing a threat to anybody . . . ummm, that sounds pretty bad, kind of authoritarian even! But if they were committing “assault” and “lunging” at the officers, that’s another story. It’s a false story, but that’s the point! The motivation for lying is that it makes your case sound stronger.
4b. How does it work?
OK, fine, but the above reasoning is not enough. After all, if you lie and nobody believes you, it doesn’t do the trick. So the next thing you need is a medium of communication that will propagate your lies.
Scientists can do this using scientific journals. Sometimes journals are pretty picky, but sometimes they’ll publish anything! At least, if you write the paper in the standard style and you include some statistically-significant p-values, then you can slip just about anything into the title and abstract and it will get through.
The doctor who said that stupid thing about smoking and cancer . . . that happened in court, he was questioned on it, maybe that didn’t work out so well for him. I can’t believe his testimony was very effective to anyone.
The government statements falsely accusing Lander of “assaulting law enforcement” and Padilla of “lunging” . . . these lies get spread on social media, in the partisan news media, and even in the nonpartisan media when they repeat the official statements.
4c. Standard operating procedure
Again, a key way that this “reckless disregard for the truth” thing” works is that it’s accepted. I don’t even think the people saying these false statements recognize them as lies. They function as terms of art. In social psychology, “long term” can mean whatever you want it to mean, and “instantly become more powerful” is just something you get to say, even if you have no measures of power. In legal consulting, you can just say something you don’t believe. And when the cops say “assaulting” or “lunging,” what that really means is that they don’t like you, that’s all. Yes, some people like me and those news reporters quoted above will object, but we’re outsiders and we don’t really count.
Indeed, the fact that the reckless disregard for the truth is so public–for example, saying “long term” when it’s right there in the article that it’s 3 days, or someone was “assaulting” or “lunging” in contradiction of direct video evidence–makes it clearer than ever that it’s accepted behavior in science, legal testimony, and law enforcement.
4d. Lack of consequences
So, yeah, why not show reckless disregard for the truth if (a) it helps you make your case, (b) you have captive media that will pass along your lies, (c) it’s such common practice that you don’t have to feel bad about it, and (d) you face no professional consequences other than the occasional angry columnist or blogger shouting into the void? Why not, indeed?
At this point a perceptive reader may have noticed an internal contradiction in my argument.
On one hand, I’m saying this deplorable behavior is common, it’s accepted, and there are lots of incentives to do it, to the extent that when the cops say someone’s resisting arrest or a social psychologist says he did a long-term study, we should know not to believe it–at least, not when the evidence in front of our goddam face contradicts it.
On the other hand, if, as Leonard Cohen sang, “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the boat is leaking, Everybody knows that the captain lied,” etc., then why does it matter? Can we just renormalize all the untruthful statements and return to where we should be?
My answer is no, because not everybody lies. Some of us are very careful with our words! But in a form of Gresham’s Law, liars win. At least in the short term, it’s easier to make a compelling argument if you’re willing to make shit up. And it’s very hard to argue against someone who’s willing to make shit up, partly because you have to waste a lot of your time pushing against the shit and partly because anyone who’s willing to make up shit might also be willing to do other underhanded things.
Another way of saying it is that lying is a negative-sum action: it might help you win the debate right now, or help you get that umpteenth publication on your resume or get on NPR or Freakonomics or Ted, it might help you get through a news cycle–but it’s also degrading public discourse, it’s adding noise to the communication channel. The same with the cops: if everyone assumes the secret police agency is going to lie, that makes it harder for the police officials who, for whatever reason, feel bound to the truth in their public statements.
And all the others who accept this behavior, who say Not my problem or But the general point is correct or But the other side does it too . . . all those bystanders are part of the problem by tipping the incentives toward more reckless disregard for the truth.
I can hardly ask the authors of junk-science papers and greedy legal consultants and sleazy official spokespeople to stop what they’re doing. But I can ask the rest of you to stop tolerating it.
