by Alex Edmans | 3 Dec 2025 | A fact is not data
“I am – I was – a geek. I played chess. I was the British girls under-14 champion.” So said Rachel Reeves in a Guardian interview. The Independent, Sky News, and Reuters ran similar headlines: They claimed that her chess ability would lead to her becoming...
by Alex Edmans | 3 Jan 2025 | A fact is not data, A statement is not fact, Confirmation bias, Data is not evidence, Evidence is not proof
Chris van Tulleken’s “Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … And Why Can’t We Stop?”, on the dangers of Ultra-Processed Food (UPF), was one of the most successful books of 2023. It was a #1 Sunday Times Bestseller and an Economist, Daily...
by Alex Edmans | 25 Jul 2024 | A statement is not fact, Confirmation bias, Data is not evidence
In March 2022, my LinkedIn feed lit up with people sharing this article: It is by Reuters, a highly-respected news source, on a report by Arabesque, an asset manager and data provider I greatly admire and wrote about in Grow the Pie. It was taken at face value and...
by Alex Edmans | 23 Jul 2024 | A statement is not fact
The opioid epidemic has seen the over-prescription of opioids as painkillers. An estimated 645,000 people died from opioid use between 1999 to 2021 in the U.S. alone, with the figure running into millions worldwide. Why was something prescribed which is so clearly...
by Alex Edmans | 23 Apr 2024 | A statement is not fact
In May Contain Lies, I highlight the value of academic research. While it’s far from perfect, it can be more reliable than practitioner studies for a number of reasons: Its goal is scientific inquiry, rather than advocacy of a pre-existing position or releasing...
