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have you read that article in detail? i have spent some time on it, and am having trouble following the argument. at the start they say that approximately equ

have you read that article in detail? i have spent some time on it, and am having trouble following the argument. at the start they say that approximately equal numbers of statements are taken from either side. then later they seem to be saying that a bias exists because the republicans lie more than the democrats. what i'm having a hard time understanding is why that is a bias - perhaps some republicans simply lie more? again: it's not they are focusing more on one party than on another (they don't: "the number of public officials subjected to PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter lens from each party is fairly even during the period under analysis"), but that they catch more lies from one party (the republicans) than the other. in particular, it appears that palin and bachmann are responsible for raising the average number of lies for the republicans. so why is this bias? why isn't it simply that palin and bachmann are liars? what am i missing (i am not american, so don't know much of the context - i just read the article and couldn't follow the logic of the argument)? one possible alternative is that they are ignoring lies by democrats and instead checking only true statements. but in that case you'd think there would be a smoking gun - notorious statements from democrats that weren't checked. the article doesn't give any evidence for that. ps also, i take issue with your final disclaimer. you can make judgement calls and still be better than coin flipping. just because it's not an automated, exact science doesn't mean that it cannot edge closer to the truth. almost everything in life is not exact, but we still know some people lie more than others. one way to do this is by looking at what is given (for example, this article) and checking whether it makes sense. maybe i have made a mistake - if so, hopefully someone will correct me. eventually this thread will lend weight to one conclusion or another...

kls 15y ago
you can make judgement calls and still be better than coin flipping. just because it's not an automated, exact science doesn't mean that it cannot edge closer to the truth. almost everything in life is not exact, but we still know some people lie more than others. I agree with this in the fuzzy world of politics you have no choice but to bring in probabilities. I would think that this system could be automated by software to aid the fact checker in coming to a decision. I would say that aggregating a politicians history of lying and using that as a weight as to whether a suspect statement could be untruthful would help. If a candidate has a history of being less than truthful and a certainty of fact cannot be deduced one could look at weight factors such as history of truthfulness on a subject to help them come to a conclusion. These methods and the algorithms could them be published for scrutiny. This way it is not arbitrary, it may not be 100% accurate but at least the system is open and the method reproducible. From there it can be refined to help aid in accuracy.
temphn 15y ago
> so why is this bias? why isn't it simply that palin and bachmann are liars? I hesitate to get into this, but Peter Orszag has only been tagged by Politifact once[1]. Yet at the time he was CBO director, there were many people stating that CBO was distorting long term projections to show that Obama's health care bill saved money. And recently the administration appeared to acknowledge that these projections were (at a minimum) indeed inaccurate[2,3]. By scrapping the CLASS Act, HHS is losing about 40 percent of the savings healthcare reform was supposed to generate. The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent estimates projected $210 billion in total deficit reduction from the healthcare law, $86 billion of which would have come from CLASS. HHS officials emphasized Friday that the healthcare reform law is still projected to cut the deficit, since about $125 billion of the most recent savings estimates are still intact. Now, you can determine for yourself whether you believe HHS and CBO's other projections given that this program was found to be insolvent before it was even launched. Please also note that there was no shortage of people vociferously opposing[4] the healthcare bill before passage who called out this particular provision as unsustainable due to adverse selection effects. The CLASS Act looks like a gift: It brings in $58 billion in net tax revenues by 2019, lowering the deficit by an equivalent amount because only minor costs will be booked during that period. Under the CBO rules, the CLASS Act technically covers one-quarter of the $250 billion shortfall in funds needed to pay for health-care reform. The gimmick lies in looking only at the CBO's ten-year budget window. The extra revenues are an illusion because of the disaster lurking just beyond that horizon. In fact, none of the $58 billion is available to pay for the House bill. The CLASS Act is so poorly designed that the $58 billion reserve and all future premiums won't come close to covering the generous benefits it's promising. Here's why the mechanics of the CLASS Act assure its eventual collapse. You may disagree, but this is one relatively cut and dried example in which the critics of the healthcare bill appear to have been proven right. Indeed, evidence-laden, numerical critiques of this particular "CLASS Act" provision were all over the web along with charges of falsehood by Orszag. Yet at the time when it might have moved the needle, Politifact was silent on this issue. This may be what OP is referring to in terms of a selection issue. They simply did not engage the CBO's projections, even though they were far more amenable to classification as "true" or "false" than standard political statements. They were also inarguably important. [1] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/peter-orszag/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/peter-orszag/ [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/health/policy/15health.html?ref=healthcarereform http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/health/policy/15health.htm... [3] http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/187697-hhs-to-suspend-class-program http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implement... [4] http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/03/news/economy/health_care_class_act.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/03/news/economy/health_care_cla...

kls 15y ago

you can make judgement calls and still be better than coin flipping. just because it's not an automated, exact science doesn't mean that it cannot edge closer to the truth. almost everything in life is not exact, but we still know some people lie more than others. I agree with this in the fuzzy world of politics you have no choice but to bring in probabilities. I would think that this system could be automated by software to aid the fact checker in coming to a decision. I would say that aggregating a politicians history of lying and using that as a weight as to whether a suspect statement could be untruthful would help. If a candidate has a history of being less than truthful and a certainty of fact cannot be deduced one could look at weight factors such as history of truthfulness on a subject to help them come to a conclusion. These methods and the algorithms could them be published for scrutiny. This way it is not arbitrary, it may not be 100% accurate but at least the system is open and the method reproducible. From there it can be refined to help aid in accuracy.

temphn 15y ago

> so why is this bias? why isn't it simply that palin and bachmann are liars? I hesitate to get into this, but Peter Orszag has only been tagged by Politifact once[1]. Yet at the time he was CBO director, there were many people stating that CBO was distorting long term projections to show that Obama's health care bill saved money. And recently the administration appeared to acknowledge that these projections were (at a minimum) indeed inaccurate[2,3]. By scrapping the CLASS Act, HHS is losing about 40 percent of the savings healthcare reform was supposed to generate. The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent estimates projected $210 billion in total deficit reduction from the healthcare law, $86 billion of which would have come from CLASS. HHS officials emphasized Friday that the healthcare reform law is still projected to cut the deficit, since about $125 billion of the most recent savings estimates are still intact. Now, you can determine for yourself whether you believe HHS and CBO's other projections given that this program was found to be insolvent before it was even launched. Please also note that there was no shortage of people vociferously opposing[4] the healthcare bill before passage who called out this particular provision as unsustainable due to adverse selection effects. The CLASS Act looks like a gift: It brings in $58 billion in net tax revenues by 2019, lowering the deficit by an equivalent amount because only minor costs will be booked during that period. Under the CBO rules, the CLASS Act technically covers one-quarter of the $250 billion shortfall in funds needed to pay for health-care reform. The gimmick lies in looking only at the CBO's ten-year budget window. The extra revenues are an illusion because of the disaster lurking just beyond that horizon. In fact, none of the $58 billion is available to pay for the House bill. The CLASS Act is so poorly designed that the $58 billion reserve and all future premiums won't come close to covering the generous benefits it's promising. Here's why the mechanics of the CLASS Act assure its eventual collapse. You may disagree, but this is one relatively cut and dried example in which the critics of the healthcare bill appear to have been proven right. Indeed, evidence-laden, numerical critiques of this particular "CLASS Act" provision were all over the web along with charges of falsehood by Orszag. Yet at the time when it might have moved the needle, Politifact was silent on this issue. This may be what OP is referring to in terms of a selection issue. They simply did not engage the CBO's projections, even though they were far more amenable to classification as "true" or "false" than standard political statements. They were also inarguably important. [1] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/peter-orszag/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/peter-orszag/ [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/health/policy/15health.html?ref=healthcarereform http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/health/policy/15health.htm... [3] http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/187697-hhs-to-suspend-class-program http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implement... [4] http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/03/news/economy/health_care_class_act.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/03/news/economy/health_care_cla...