{"id":2863,"date":"2009-10-08T20:39:24","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T04:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=2863"},"modified":"2009-10-09T02:41:30","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T10:41:30","slug":"franken-does-truth-a-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=2863","title":{"rendered":"Franken Does Truth a Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding: 1em ; padding-bottom: 0 ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/blogs\/63717157.html\"><q>Franken gets testy over statistics<\/q> by Eric Roper of <cite>the Star Tribune<\/cite><\/a> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\"><p>The senator spent the bulk of his time attempting to debunk the witness, particularly a statistic in his testimony that employees have a 63 percent chance of <q>prevailing<\/q> in arbitration compared to 43 percent in litigation.<\/p> <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">&#91;&#8230;&#93;<\/span> <p>De Bernardo eventually conceded that he did not know whether $50 would be considered \"prevailing\" in the statistic,<span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">&#91;&#8230;&#93;<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div> <p>While Franken has at times resorted to worse intellectual dishonesty than in this case he exposes, here <em>he is right on the mark<\/em>.  As Franken's line of questioning and the answer that it elicts show, the statistic in question tells us virtually nothing about whether the outcomes of arbitration would be considered equally or more favorable to employees than are the outcomes of litigation.  It is, in other words, a <em>garbage<\/em> statistic.<\/p> <p>Firms are entitled to require arbitration as a condition of doing business with them, but those who deal with these firms are likewise entitled to require that there be no such imposition as their own condition of doing business.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franken gets testy over statistics by Eric Roper of the Star Tribune The senator spent the bulk of his time attempting to debunk the witness, particularly a statistic in his testimony that employees have a 63 percent chance of prevailing in arbitration compared to 43 percent in litigation. &#91;&#8230;&#93; De Bernardo eventually conceded that he [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,104,4],"tags":[708,706,709,707,493],"class_list":["post-2863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-al-franken","tag-arbitration","tag-contracts","tag-litigation","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}