Ed Stetzer–Bad (Religion) statistics how they fuel disappointment among undiscerning readers

Bad stats. When will we learn? Is anybody willing to own it?

Thankfully, at least one person is.

Tyler Charles. Charles is author of the original piece in RELEVANT magazine.

On Monday of this week, Tyler Charles wrote a helpful mea culpa over at High Calling. In it, he admitted what he called his own “amateur” journalism and confessed to being guilty of “hyping bad stats.”

In the recent article, Charles confessed, “the statistics upon which my entire article hinged were, how should I say this, um…iffy. At best”¦ the data had been extrapolated from a study designed to determine something completely different.”

Charles explains, “after closer examination, the sample size was too small to legitimately make the claims I had clearly and consistently made.” Charles stepped forward because “I couldn’t justify the conclusions my article suggested.”

Read it all from Christianity Today.

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