Talk About Random

It must have been back in October of 2004 when Glen Stassen first editorialized about abortions increasing under Bush. Besides blogging about Stassen's faulty use of faulty statistics, I also sent an e-mail to Professor Stassen regarding his statistics and his methods. Today I received an e-mail back from Professor Stassen. It seems to be a type of form e-mail that he sent out en masse to different individuals who commented on his editorial.

His e-mail to me (and most likely others) is basically a defense of statistics and analysis. It includes no mention of the imaginary enormous large rise in abortions for Colorado and Arizona that comprise the large majority of his mythical increase. To date I have never seen Professor Stassen admit that the faulty statistics from these two states were the main source of his claims.

He also never mentions the analysis by the Alan Guttmacher Institute which found that abortions have decreased during Bush's early years in office or his own admittance that the statistics from the AGI were more accurate than his.

His last paragraph concludes with, "If the number of abortions also increased by approximately 48,000 above what would have been expected if the decline in the previous decade had continued, and they increased in 2002 by approximately another 48,000, then the total number of abortions in 2002 was about 96,000 more than expected. If that trend continued again in 2003, then almost half of the decrease during the decade of the 1990s has now been reversed. We will not know that until more of the 2003 data are in, but the same causal factors that I named have continued throughout the Bush presidency, and the five states whose 2003 data I do have confirm it decisively."

Why is Glen Stassen sending an e-mail out defending his statistical methods months after he has admitted that his conclusions weren't correct and the AGI analysis was "significantly better?" Why is he talking as if the statistics from more states aren't available? Unless this e-mail response has been lost is cyberspace for the last 8+ months, Professor Stassen is sending out an intentionally deceptive e-mail to individuals who e-mailed him. The response acts like the AGI's analysis doesn't exist and he still has a case.

Other statements made by Stassen in his e-mail to me:

During the present administration, women's unemployment increased above 6%, and the abortion rate has increased....

The total number of abortions nationally was 3.265 times as many as in the sixteen states. This suggests that the national increase in abortions in 2001 was 3.625 times 6,007, or about 20,000 instead of the 28,000 decrease that had been the trend in the 1990s....

The ten states for which I have the data in 2000 handy had their abortions increase by 4,067 in 2001, just about exactly the same proportion as the increase for sixteen states in 2002.