What do you think?
Rate this book
Sex, Drugs & Body Counts
Big, attention-grabbing numbers are frequently used in policy debates and media reporting: "At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia." "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry."
Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences.
This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade.
Contributors: Peter Andreas, Brown University; Thomas J. Biersteker, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies-Geneva; Sue E. Eckert, Brown University; David A. Feingold, Ophidian Research Institute and UNESCO; H. Richard Friman, Marquette University; Kelly M. Greenhill, Tufts University and Harvard University; John Hagan, Northwestern University; Lara J. Nettelfield, Institut Barcelona D'Estudis Internacionals and Simon Fraser University; Wenona Rymond-Richmond, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Winifred Tate, Colby College; Kay B. Warren, Brown University
Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences.
This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade.
Contributors: Peter Andreas, Brown University; Thomas J. Biersteker, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies-Geneva; Sue E. Eckert, Brown University; David A. Feingold, Ophidian Research Institute and UNESCO; H. Richard Friman, Marquette University; Kelly M. Greenhill, Tufts University and Harvard University; John Hagan, Northwestern University; Lara J. Nettelfield, Institut Barcelona D'Estudis Internacionals and Simon Fraser University; Wenona Rymond-Richmond, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Winifred Tate, Colby College; Kay B. Warren, Brown University
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2010
About the author
Peter Andreas
33 books32 followersPeter Andreas is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. Andreas has written numerous books, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 7, 2017
It wasn’t as exciting as the title indicates :-) Basically, it’s a collection of political science essays. My synopsis below:
Statistics are important, but very hard to measure when they involved armed conflict, drugs, or trafficking. Agencies push numbers that make them look good to try to ask for/justify higher funding. Even if the number is totally made up, it acts as an “anchor” for people trying to make their own estimates.
A good example is casualties of the war in Bosnia. In 1992, the president, foreign minister, and commander of the army met to decide what number to use, and agreed on 150K civilians killed by Serb nationalists. Then the foreign minister announced that 250K civilians had been killed, which became the number that “everyone” used for a while. Years later, the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center worked on a project that led to publishing The Book of the Dead in 2007, which counted everyone killed and came up with a number of 97K. This made some people very angry and they denounced the project and people who had worked on it.
One school of thought is that it’s OK to exaggerate numbers in order to draw attention to a problem. This school of thought makes me mad :-)
Anyway, what I took away from the book is basically never trust numbers for things that are really hard to count, like most things involving illegal activity.
Statistics are important, but very hard to measure when they involved armed conflict, drugs, or trafficking. Agencies push numbers that make them look good to try to ask for/justify higher funding. Even if the number is totally made up, it acts as an “anchor” for people trying to make their own estimates.
A good example is casualties of the war in Bosnia. In 1992, the president, foreign minister, and commander of the army met to decide what number to use, and agreed on 150K civilians killed by Serb nationalists. Then the foreign minister announced that 250K civilians had been killed, which became the number that “everyone” used for a while. Years later, the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center worked on a project that led to publishing The Book of the Dead in 2007, which counted everyone killed and came up with a number of 97K. This made some people very angry and they denounced the project and people who had worked on it.
One school of thought is that it’s OK to exaggerate numbers in order to draw attention to a problem. This school of thought makes me mad :-)
Anyway, what I took away from the book is basically never trust numbers for things that are really hard to count, like most things involving illegal activity.
December 17, 2010
Fair warning, this book is EXTREMELY dry, but the ideas presented are far from it.
The basic idea is that while, yes, bad things happen in the world, there aren't anywhere near what people are suggesting. Further, there's a whole lot of "juking the numbers" going on. As an example, a country may have a rash of kidnappings or disappearances that are never solved, but rather than merely say "we don't know what happened" some one in some board of statistics files it all under "sold into sex slavery" because obviously those people are crafty and if someone just drops off the face of the Earth that must because some criminal mastermind made them go *poof*.
This is a deeply rational book that encourages thought beyond knee-jerk emotionalism in favor of actually attempting to solve global problems first by getting the truth.
The basic idea is that while, yes, bad things happen in the world, there aren't anywhere near what people are suggesting. Further, there's a whole lot of "juking the numbers" going on. As an example, a country may have a rash of kidnappings or disappearances that are never solved, but rather than merely say "we don't know what happened" some one in some board of statistics files it all under "sold into sex slavery" because obviously those people are crafty and if someone just drops off the face of the Earth that must because some criminal mastermind made them go *poof*.
This is a deeply rational book that encourages thought beyond knee-jerk emotionalism in favor of actually attempting to solve global problems first by getting the truth.
May 14, 2011
A mixed bag (an evaluation that may have to do with my interests). The entries on the overcounting of victims in the Bosnian War and the undercounting of same in Darfur and refugees in Congo are valuable. Politics are of course to blame in the miscounting and detailed in the volume. The essays on State Department indicators used to evaluate countries compliance in combatting drug and human trafficking are more abstruse.
April 12, 2011
Here's a quick summary to save you three weeks' slog: Don't trust stats as reported. It's hard to get a good count of things like drug/sex trafficking and genocide, and often those numbers don't mean what you think they mean anyway. Bad numbers make bad policy.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
February 1, 2024
One of the best books i have ever read. Anyone interested in government policies and justification for them will love this book.
Want to Read
September 27, 2010 HA29 .S558 2010
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews