Lies, bullshit, and statistics

Tim Harford in the Financial Times, with what could be the most important article of the year (and why I despair of today's media politics):

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2e43b3e8-01c7-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62.html

This is the real tragedy. It’s not that politicians spin things their way — of course they do. That is politics. It’s that politicians have grown so used to misusing numbers as weapons that they have forgotten that used properly, they are tools.

Depressing.