Corruption in Evidence Presentations: Effects Without Causes, Cherry-Picking, Overreaching, Chartjunk, and the Rage to Conclude

Overview

Making a presentation is a moral act as well as an intellectual activity. Beautiful Evidence ch. 6 catalogs corrupt presentation techniques that are "enemies of the truth, that corrupt reasoning, that produce unbeautiful anti-evidence." The five named corruption types — effects without causes, cherry-picking, overreaching/economisting, chartjunk, and the rage to conclude — range from subtle language choices (passive voice) to systematic research design failures (poor controls) to organizational pathologies (bureaucracies of secondary presentation). Each has a concrete detection method. The chapter draws on the 9/11 Commission Report, the Chalmers portcaval shunt study, Galenson's art history book, and the evidence reduction chain to show how corruption operates at every stage from data collection to published report.

§1. Effects Without Causes and the Evasion of Responsibility

The 9/11 Commission: Passive Voice as Corruption

The opening case is the Report of the 9/11 Commission (2004), p. 265, describing security lapses that may have allowed the attacks. The passage Tufte examines lists seven distinct failures — domestic agencies never mobilized, no direction or plan was established, borders were not hardened, transportation systems were not fortified, electronic surveillance was not targeted at domestic threats, state and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI, and the public was not warned. Every failure is rendered in passive voice throughout.

Tufte's verb count from this passage: