In politics, data are used to market policy, not to make policy. That seems backwards to most of us: Shouldn’t information drive decisions, not the other way around? Not in the world of politics. And increasingly, not in the world of regulation by so-called expert agencies. The current case in point is the proliferation of bad math and falsehoods masquerading as facts in the context of the possible regulation of set-top boxes. These make for powerful political marketing, but lead to bad policy when taken as truth.

Read “Data dysfunction: Time to fact-check the set-top box arguments” on AEI.