The best columns that I’ve written for the Hartford Business Journal were composed while I was naked in my study.
Not being one to argue with the evidence, I decided that all my columns should be written while naked. When I tried that at the Business Journal offices, I was greeted by marriage proposals and a stern reprimand from the editors. I’ve been in an editorial funk ever since. How could they quarrel with such clear and convincing evidence? Didn’t they want the product to be outstanding? I recommended that we have clothing-optional Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays in the newsroom, since the science seemed so clear.
The power of an anecdote just isn’t that strong, is it? The naked Cohen would be a flimsy data point from which to draw too many firm conclusions.
That’s not to say that anecdote doesn’t trump science, logic, or wise public policy, with astonishing regularity. The political environment (and the journalistic instinct) is primed to encourage and respond to anecdote, in large part because data are dull and scientists and accountants are excruciating — even when they are correct. Beyond that, inconvenient truths are best swept aside with emotional anecdote.
As powerful, and almost as meaningless, as a powerful anecdote is feel-good symbolism — an act of grace or charity or justice so soul satisfying that no one will bother to check for effectiveness.
In Connecticut, what has been the Democratic legislative response to Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s proposed budget cuts? Symbolism and anecdote. When Rell performed a bit of permanent surgery on Connecticut’s health care advocate, Kevin Lembo, it took state Sen. Mary Ann Handley about 15 seconds to offer up an anecdote about how Lembo had helped one of her constituents. As the Associated Press reported at the time, “Several lawmakers say they have referred constituents to Lembo for help and have been pleased with the results.”
Well then, Kevin, your job is safe. No financial or program analysis. Anecdotes are good enough for us.
Of course, Rell is no enemy of the anecdote tyranny. Barely had her proposal to allow 24-hour bars at the casinos emerged for public viewing when a Navy sailor who had been drinking something other than sea water at one of the casinos was involved in a fatal car accident. Rell torpedoed her own plan like a Trident sub run amok. One anecdote was enough for her.
Journalists love anecdotes so much that they often create their own. How many on-camera young television reporters have you seen at fast-food restaurants, poised to buy a triple-thick bacon cheeseburger with chocolate sauce, when, at the last second, they look at the new and improved and required calorie information, slap their little foreheads, and express shock and horror? Nice anecdote, but it has little to do with reality. A Yale study released in May in the American Journal of Public Health found that almost no one looked at the nutritional information, whether it was on computer terminals, pamphlets or posters, or written in ketchup between the slice of cheese and the hamburger.
The anecdote factory went on overtime when a federal task force recently recommended eliminating routine annual breast cancer screening for women under 50 with no overt risk factors. What could have been an interesting debate among scientists soon became a parade of anecdotes. “My Aunt Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 43. How dare they!”
I’m going to put my clothes on now and deliver this column to the office. Have I told you how much better everyone would write if they were naked? Really. The anecdotal evidence is compelling.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
