Tuesday, May 30, 2006
If you can't trust the CDC, who can you trust?
Two years ago, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report saying that obesity was killing 300,000 Americans each year and was about to overtake smoking as the nation's leading cause of death. A few months later, the agency quietly issued a retraction, admitting it had made some arithmetical errors and overstated deaths due to obesity by several times.
Now one of the authors of that paper has been found guilty of cheating taxpayers by padding her expense accounts by more than $7,000. For example, she claimed a $106 cost was for "PowerPoint slides" when actually it was spent at Filene's Basement department store. Donna Stroup, the guilty party, has resigned her job and will be sentenced in July.
Not every government bureaucrat is dishonest. But the temptation to overstate a problem in order to get a larger budget for your department is always great. Officials whose budgets grow the fastest are considered heroes and are often given pay raises or promotions. Sometimes, it seems that the only way to get the attention of Congressional appropriators is with a crisis, which is why the news media makes everything seem like the end of the world yet the end never comes.
If you believe a problem is real, but don't think it is the end of the world, being honest about it may lead to your budget being cut in order to provide funds for someone else who claims their problem is the end of the world. This puts enormous pressure on people to exaggerate.
Now one of the authors of that paper has been found guilty of cheating taxpayers by padding her expense accounts by more than $7,000. For example, she claimed a $106 cost was for "PowerPoint slides" when actually it was spent at Filene's Basement department store. Donna Stroup, the guilty party, has resigned her job and will be sentenced in July.
Not every government bureaucrat is dishonest. But the temptation to overstate a problem in order to get a larger budget for your department is always great. Officials whose budgets grow the fastest are considered heroes and are often given pay raises or promotions. Sometimes, it seems that the only way to get the attention of Congressional appropriators is with a crisis, which is why the news media makes everything seem like the end of the world yet the end never comes.
If you believe a problem is real, but don't think it is the end of the world, being honest about it may lead to your budget being cut in order to provide funds for someone else who claims their problem is the end of the world. This puts enormous pressure on people to exaggerate.
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