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Comment by Railsify | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. The article is using statistics to lie.

Read the actual study. The people who did the study are knowledgeable about the topic. If a non expert can think of a problem with the paper after a few moments of thinking about it then it is highly likely that person’s objections are not valid and are accounted for in the study.

A person should not read the study or the article and think, “The reason this is nonsense is X.” Rather the thought should be, “I wonder how the study accounts for X.”

This is possible, but it's also possible that they are just lying too

Some studies use household income over years to """prove""" that incomes have either fallen or stagnated. They just outright ignore that the size of the household went from 6+ to about 4. In this scenario a constant household income meant about 50% increase in per Capita income

Are you suggesting that households make use of child labor?

Don't like a third of kids in high school have part time jobs? I believe those rates have been falling too

Plenty of knowledgeable people have very motivated reasoning

Yes. Also, people who know a lot in one area have a tendency to think their 5 minutes of thought on a study in a area they know virtually nothing about is on par with those performing said study. This is especially so on this site. So many people chime in thinking they’ve spotted a fatal flaw without contemplating that those who did the study have almost certainly thought if all the easy potential objections.

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