Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

by Carl T. Bergstrom

A notorious Breitbart headline similarly denied readers the opportunity to make meaningful comparisons. This particular bit of scaremongering proclaimed that 2,139 of the DREAM Act recipients—undocumented adults who came to the United States as children—had been convicted or accused of crimes against Americans.*3 That sounds like a big number, a scary number. But of course, the DREAM Act pertains to a huge number of people—nearly 700,000 held DACA status concurrently and nearly 800,000 were granted DACA status at some point before the program was eliminated. This means that only about 0.3 percent of all DACA recipients—fewer than 1 in 300—have been accused of crimes against Americans. That sounds better, but how does this number compare to similar rates for American citizens? With 0.75 percent of Americans behind bars, US citizens are twice as likely to be presently incarcerated as DACA recipients are to have been accused of a crime. About 8.6 percent of American citizens have been convicted of a felony at some point in their lives, making the DACA population look better still. Of course, DACA recipients are younger and had generally not been convicted of a crime prior to being awarded DACA status,*4 so they have had less time to commit crimes than your average American. But it turns out that 30 percent of Americans have been arrested for something other than a traffic violation by age twenty-three. Even assuming that Breitbart’s figures were correct, the news outlet prese...