rant on misused stats

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The following is a review of the book Freakonomics that I found on the Amazon.com website. It's the basis of my rant today. Deceptive statistics and numbers.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating, Entertaining, and Thought-provoking , March 17, 2006
Reviewer: Dr. Marilyn R. Barry (Minneapolis, USA) - See all my reviews

The book is engaging and surprisingly humorous read, which opened my mind to a whole new way of looking at the world. It was fascinating to see the synthesis between economics and our everyday lives. Events which seem disconnected or driven by other influences are revealed with great clarity as having basic economic principles behind them.

I can give you an example. Every part starts with an interesting question. Let's say: "What is the hidden cause of obesity in the USA? It is followed by numbers. As a PH.D in Sexuality I can tell you that there are more than 20+ million impotent American men. Many of them are married and their wives are equally, if not more sexually dissatisfied. This results in emotional eating, depression, alcoholism, smoking, etc abuses. Does this have economical effect? Of course yes, because only the blue pill's production earns billions. What can be done? I recommend to my clients staying up-to-date with the latest scientific discoveries revealed in bestsellers such as "Scientifically guarantee male multiple orgasm and ultimate sex" by Alan Ritz.

The book reads as six articles from a quality magazine. Their questions will challenge you, their answers may provoke you, but the book is entertaining, thought-provoking and will likely change the way you view the world around you.
Marilyn R. Barry Ph. D in Sexuality

My problem with this is that the number 20 million hurts my common sense facility. Now don't take the following numbers as gospel--I'm just guessing and not looking them up or anything.

Let's say that there's 300 million people in the USA. Now typically around half a population is below the age of 18 and add in the elderly and you have say 40% of the population at an age where they can reproduce. So we're talking around 120 million. About half of those are women so now we have the number 60 million men as being in the targeted class for impotence. So if we're to believe that 20 million of them are impotent--then that's a third of all men. I really don't believe that a third of all men can't have erections.

So does that mean that Marilyn Barry is trying to deceive us? Well, that all depends. Therapists and others that make money off of that sort of thing define "impotence" a little differently from You and I--and the dictionary, for that matter. I think it all started with the pharmaceutical industry but in any case in that field impotence is defined a little differently so that a suitably large pool of patients can be generated. After all, people won't invest in companies unless there's a liklihood of big profits and that only comes when there's a large population of patients.

Anyway, impotence is defined in that area as any man that has had a sexual experience that wasn't good. Obviously not having an erection would certainly qualify--but coming too quickly also does. Or having a bad partner or any of a hundred other causes. Pretty slick, huh? Suddenly we're not talking a couple million customers--we're talking 20 million! Ka-ching!

Impotence isn't the only area for this medical dodge either. Prozac and depression was another similar situation. The normal medical definition for depression took a back door to the more profitable situation of diagnosing anti-depression meds for anyone that felt blue or out of sorts.

The end result, of course, is that this approach worked. Worked great, in fact. Both classes of drugs, led by Viagra and Prozac but with plenty of similar products, are huge money makers.

And on a secondary rant--that book review is really nothing but a plug for her practice. There's really nothing about the book in it just a superficial description of the format. LOL Which is in a way appropriate because the book, Freakanomics, while quite entertaining, is a little short on substance also. But that's another rant....