Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Paul Woodroffe
Driving back to Asheville this weekend, I heard a striking segment on NPR's On the Media, about an insidious little number that's wended its way throw decades of crime, politics and hysteria.
50,000.
The segment begins 27 minutes in.
Yes, that's right: "50,000" (possibly) began as "human sacrifices to Satan per annum" back in the '80s cult craze. It endured on as the annual death toll from secondhand smoke and even jumped back in time to take a place as the number of Korean war casualties.
It re-emerged in recent years in an NBC report (from "law enforcement sources") as the number of child predators online at any given time, including in a speech by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Someone says it, a journalist quotes them, a politician quotes the newspaper, the number becomes official lore.
The researchers interviewed called it a "Goldilocks number" just large enough to be shocking, but not so large as to trigger a person's tendency to disbelieve. What makes it so fascinating is that, unlike many bogus statistics, it's true origins seem lost, making it fascinatingly mysterious.
But why it's endured is something else, I think. Numbers have become one of our societal gospels: put in a stat (true or not) and people of whatever other creed will tremble for a moment. No matter how shoddy the rest of the argument, it grants an instant credibility.
So try an experiment: the next time you're in a heated discussion where you have no statistics, invoke "50,000 [blank]" and see what happens. Goldilocks lives.
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