Bad Data

August 26, 2019
Schryvers, a senior planner for the city of Calgary, offers a debut that challenges the accepted wisdom about a host of data-driven programs and convincingly argues that people and institutions often rely on the wrong info. Under his scrutiny, various measures—fee-for-service billing in medical settings; the corporate emphasis on short-term earnings; bibliometrics, the evaluation of academics based on how many publications they are cited in—all fail to provide reliable data for credibly enumerated reasons. Schryvers points to Goodhart’s law, which holds that “when a measure becomes a target, the measure ceases to be a good measure.” Examining other pitfalls of data collection and analysis, Schryvers notes that some things simply defy measurement; here he points to the Vietnam War, where the American military’s reliance on the infamous body counts, for example, failed to account for the insurmountable North Vietnamese commitment to victory. Schryvers’s insights will provide valuable tools to readers, enabling them to think critically about the myriad uses of data today. Agent: Jeff Shreve, the Science Factory.