In education this is particularly bad. Students and parents also steer into selection bias under the assumption that peer groups are important. But, to general

In education this is particularly bad. Students and parents also steer into selection bias under the assumption that peer groups are important. But, to generalize the point into public discourse broadly: "Statistics are a problem." A lot of public discourse revolve around quantitative arguments like this. Police shootings, women's 83 cents on the dollar, British Muslims' on Sharia, unemployment rates... Even in the more intellectual branches of public discourse, bad arguments with a similar flavour can be the dominant ones.