Now that Obama's dog has won the War on Christmas, or something, it's time to get down to a war that really matters: the war on terrible, lying infographics, which have become endemic in the blogosphere, and constantly threaten to break out into epidemic or even pandemic status. 既然连奥巴马的爱犬都能在圣诞节这样的时候引人注目，那么我们也应该开始关注一些真正搏人眼球的东西，是时候向那些耸人听闻、谎话连篇的“信息图”（infographic）宣战了。这些信息图已经成了博客圈里的地区性痼疾，并且时有传染开来乃至大范围流行之势。 The reservoir of this disease of erroneous infographics is internet marketers who don't care whether the information in their graphics is right ... just so long as you link it. As a Christmas present to, well, everyone, I'm issuing a plea to bloggers to help stop this plague in its track. 这种信息图谬误泛滥之症的宿主正是互联网营销人员：这些网络推手并不在意图片上的信息是否准确，他们只关心怎样吸引读者去点击和链接他们的网页。嗯，作为献给所有人的一份圣诞大礼，我号召博客圈作者们携起手来，尽快阻止这场瘟疫的进一步扩散。 Below the break, a tour of some of the more egregious examples, and some thoughts on why they've become so prevalent. 下面我将举几个例子，让大家领略一番这些糟糕至极的信息图，然后研究一下这些图为什么会流传得这么广。 For those of you who can't sit through all that boring writing, however, I will first deliver my message in--ahem!--a more visual format: 不过呢，为了照顾那些没办法耐着性子看完无聊长文的读者，我会把自己的想法表达得，嗯哼，更加直观化： [P1]
Remember this gem? * * * * * 还记得下面这张制作精良的美图吗？ [P2]
Terrifying! When that appendix starts aching, pack up the car and head for Canada as fast as you can! 太吓人了！当你的阑尾开始发痛的时候，千万不要犹豫，赶紧打包上车，以最快的速度开到加拿大去就诊！ Except, er, no. The graphic was willfully misrepresenting its alleged sources. For example, the United States actual ranks 19 out of 19 in "amenable deaths" (inside or outside of hospitals), which includes anyone who dies of anything that is in theory treatable. While amenable mortality is a nonstandard measure that differs from study to study, most of these deaths are due to cancer and circulatory diseases, not antibiotic resistance, much less hospital-acquired infections. The other statistics are similarly garbled. 或者不需要这样，除非……这张图对所谓的资料来源做了有意的歪曲和误导。比如说，美国医院“承担责任的死亡数”（包括医院里和医院外）在19个发达国家中其实是排在第19位的，即使是把那些理论上可治好的死亡病例也算进去。医院负有责任的死亡数并不是一个规范的测量标准，它在不同的研究中也会存在差异，不过这些病例的死亡原因大多数是癌症或循环系统疾病，而不是抗生素抗性，更不是医源性感染。同样地，图中的其他数据也是多少经过篡改的。 And who could forget this stunner? * * * * * 还有，谁能忘记下面这张精妙之作呢？ [P3]
What is wrong with our values?! 我们的价值观究竟出了什么问题？！ What is wrong with this infographic? Let's just start at the headline. The annual cost of incarceration in New Jersey in 2009--according to the lawmakers who proposed to make inmates pay it--was $38,700. The annual cost of Princeton tuition in 2010 was $48,580. Obviously, the gap was probably stretched a bit by the year's difference between the prison stat and the Princeton stat. But it was not inverted. 这张信息图又有什么问题呢？根据立法者（他们曾提议要求囚犯支付监禁成本）提供的数据，2009年度新泽西州的监禁成本是3.87万美元；同年，普林斯顿大学的学费支出是4.858万元。当然，随着年份的不同，监狱成本和大学学费成本在数字上的差异会有所变化，但绝不会是颠倒过来的。 Moreover, the people who linked this infographic should have known better, because Ivy League tuition hasn't been that low in years, a fact which has been the subject of great complaint in many, many hand-wringing articles about the cost of higher education. 除此之外，链接过这张信息图的读者理应知道，近年来由于常春藤盟校的学费一直高企不下，因而已经引发了大范围的抱怨之声，太多太多文章都在痛心疾首地控诉高等教育的巨额成本。 And as a sometime cyclist myself, this infographic naturally caught my eye: * * * * * 又比如，作为一个时而骑自行车的人，下面这幅信息图自然而然地吸引了我的眼球： [4]
However, if you look at the source paper for those amazing biking stats, you'll see that the data is handled a little ... weirdly. They have one source for the biking stats, another source (which I can't find) for the obesity stats, even though the paper contains data for both--and, natch, whatever data source they used puts the US obesity rate much higher than the paper (and than the OECD figures which are the standard comparison). They only show you data for Germany and Holland--with good reason. Australia, which has similar cycling rates to Germany, has a much higher obesity rate, as does the fairly bike-friendly UK. 可是，假如你去找找提供这些有关自行车的惊人数据的来源论文，你就会发现这张图把相关数据处理得有点……古怪。关于骑自行车者的统计数据是来自其中一篇论文，而关于肥胖者的统计数据却是来自另一篇论文（我没有找到），即使是同一篇论文里已经给出了以上两份数据——毫无疑问，图中采信的数据要比论文提供的美国肥胖人数比例高得多（也比经济合作与发展组织提供的标准对比图表要高）。而且，图中只给出了德国和荷兰的统计数据，这当然是有充分理由的。澳大利亚骑自行车人数比例与德国相近，但是肥胖人数比例却高得多；青睐自行车的英国也是如此。 As for air quality, it's not even possible to say what percentage of air pollution comes from automobiles in the US--it depends on the location, and the pollutant. But it isn't even close to true to say that 50-90% of all air pollution comes from automobiles; the EPA says that "up to half" of all air pollution is emitted by motor vehicles, but that category includes things like construction equipment, and I don't think anyone has yet come up with a way to substitute a bicycle for a crane. Moreover, on important particulate measures the US actually has better air quality than most of Europe--thanks to our lower density and, in some cases, to tighter and more effective regulation. 至于空气质量，甚至连美国空气污染问题中有几成是来自汽车的都很难讲，这跟具体地点和污染物都不无关联。然而，图中却大言不惭地说，空气污染中有50%到90%都是汽车造成的。美国环保局则称，所有空气污染问题中有“将近一半”是来自机动车辆的排放；不过，机动车辆中还包括建筑施工设备——我想，目前还没有人能够找到一种办法，让自行车来代替起重机吧。而且，美国由于施行了多项颗粒物控制措施，空气质量已经比大多数欧洲国家要好，这都归因于我们较低的人口密度，某种意义上还得益于更严格、更有效的管理制度。 This morning, I saw this at E.D. Kain's place (he's already corrected) from a site called visualeconomics.creditloan.com: * * * * * 今天早上，我从E·D·卡因在 visualeconomics.creditloan.com 网站的个人页面（他已经做了修改）上看到了下面这张信息图： [P5]
Now, this should set off all sorts of alarm bells to anyone who has read any news reports about employment data. Or met any people. Do we think it is true that only 12% of employed men in the United States are working as little as 40 hours a week? Let's do some math here. Women are roughly half the labor force. So the average of all those work hours has to be the sum of this equation: 此时此刻，这应该是给一部分人敲响了形形色色的警钟。这些人可能读过有关就业数据的新闻报道，也可能听过相关的见解。美国的从业男性中，工作时间少于每周40小时的比例只有12%，我们都认同这一事实吧？好的，那就让我们来做点数学计算。在全部劳动力中，男女大约各占一半。因此，全部从业人员的平均工作时间可用下面这个方程来表示： .5(.858Fulltimem + .142PartTimem) + 5(.66Fulltimew + .34PartTimew) 0.5 × ( 0.88 × 全职男性工作时间 + 0.12 × 兼职男性工作时间 ) + 0.5 × ( 0.66 × 全职女性工作时间 + 0.34 × 兼职女性工作时间 ) Assume that every single person working "more than 40 hours a week" is working only 41 hours. This gives you 假设每个“超过每周40小时”从业人员的工作时间都是每周41小时，那么我们有 .5(36.1 + .12PartTimem) + .5(27.1+ .34PartTimew) 0.5 × ( 0.88 × 41 + 0.12 × 兼职男性工作时间 ) + 0.5 × ( 0.66 × 41 + 0.34 × 兼职女性工作时间 ) For simplicity's sake, let's assume that women and men work the same number of part time hours and solve for a single "X": 为了简单起见，假定兼职女性和兼职女性的平均工作时间是相同的，设为未知数为 X，解出下面这个方程 .5(35.1 + .12X) + .5(27.1 + .34X) = 33.6 0.5 × ( 36.1 + 0.12 × X ) + 0.5 × ( 27.1 + 0.34 × X ) = 33.6 How likely is it that the average part time worker is working only 10.5 hours a week? Possible. But not likely. And that of course assumes that not one person in the "more than 40 hours a week category" worked more than 41 hours, which is obviously untrue; I work more hours than that almost every single week, and I'm sure, so do many of you. 兼职人员每周的工作时间只有8.7小时，这样的几率会有多大？这当然是有可能的，但可能性不大。当然，这个结果还基于没有一名全职人员的工作时间“超过每周40小时”这一前提假设，这显然也是不现实的。我几乎每周的工作时间都比这个要多；我敢肯定，很多人都是如此。 As you allow the hours worked above 40 to creep up, the average workweek of part time workers has to go down even more dramatically, because there are fewer of them; it takes a bigger decline to drag down the average. By the time you allow the average hours of those working more than 40 hours a week to go as high as 45, the part timers have to be working negative hours. 正因为你允许“超过每周40小时”的工作时间日益增加，这就使得兼职人员工作时间下滑得更为显著；因为留给兼职工作的时间越来越少，从而导致平均工作时间日渐走低。假如你接受的“超过每周40小时”工作时间达到45小时的话，那么兼职工作时间就该变成负值了。 As a check--in 1998, when labor demand was near its absolute peak, the percentage of men working more than 40 hours a week was 40.2%. I am very skeptical that that percentage has more than doubled in the intervening years. 我们可以从历史数据中得到验证：1998年，当劳动力需求接近绝对峰值时，从业男性中每周工作时间超过40小时的比例是40.2%。这一比例在近十多年来增长到原来的两倍以上，我对此是持怀疑态度的。 And indeed, if go to the source, you find that the International Labor Organization does indeed claim that 88% of men work these sorts of hours. However, there is no source for that claim (update: a commenter says that they are using "full time workers"--and defining "full time" as "more than 30 hours a week"). And you will see that this is supposed to apply to all males over the age of 15. This seems, to put it mildly, wildly implausible. After you add in all the high school guys working at chicken shacks, and the retirees working as greeters at Wal-Mart, you still have 85.8% of all men working more than 40 hours? 而事实上，如果你去追溯一下根源的话，你会发现国际劳工组织确实发表数据称，从业男性中每周工作时间超过40小时者所占的比例达到88%。不过，这个数据是没有根据的（更正：国际劳工组织的数据指的是“全职工作”的男性，“全职”的定义是工作时间“超过每周30小时”）。而且，你会发现这个数据的统计对象包括了所有15岁以上的男性。说得委婉一点，这似乎是极度令人难以置信。要是把那些在鸡肉快餐店打零工的高中生、在沃尔玛当接待员的退休人员这些人统统算上的话，男性每周工作时间超过40小时的比例还可能占到85.8%吗？ A search of their database reveals a more plausible dataset, which shows that nothing like a majority of either sex are working over 40 hours per week. 不过，他们的数据库里的一份资料给出了更合理的统计结果。下面这张图表明，不论是男性还是女性，每周工作时间超过40小时的人并不占多数。 [P6]
If you look at these lovely, lying infographics, you will notice that they tend to have a few things in common: * * * * * 如果你研究一下这些漂亮而又虚假的信息图，你就会发现，它们往往具有这样几个共同点： They are made by random sites without particularly obvious connection to the subject matter. Why is Creditloan.com making an infographic about the hourly workweek? 1. 这些图都是由莫名其妙的网站制作的，并且跟网站的主题没什么明显的联系。为什么一个名为“信用贷款”的网站会制作出有关“每周工作时间”的信息图呢？ Those sites, when examined, either have virtually no content at all, or are for things like debt consolidation--industries with low reputation where brand recognition, if it exists at all, is probably mostly negative. 2. 假如再仔细考察一下这些网站，它们要么基本上没有任何实质性的内容，要么就是有关债务重组之类的东西，大都是一些信誉度低、品牌知名度非无即差的产业。 The sources for the data, if they are provided at all, tend to be in very small type at the bottom of the graphic, and instead of easy-to-type names of reports, they provide hard-to-type URLs which basically defeat all but the most determined checkers. 3. 这些图中数据的来源（假如给出的话）往往被放在图片底部，只占那么小小的一块区域。同时，这些来源大都不是名称简短、容易找到的论文或者报告，取而代之是一长串字母、不易输入的网址。除了几项最为可靠的校验对象外，这些网址基本上都是无效的死链。 The infographics tend to suggest that SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS HAPPENING IN THE US RIGHT NOW!!! the better to trigger your panic button and get you to spread the bad news BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! 4. 这些图往往通过宣扬“眼下美国正发生着超级可怕的事情！！！”来触动你的恐慌神经，并要求你最好在“趁一切还来得及”的时候把这些坏消息传播出去。 The infographics are being used to get unwitting bloggers to drive up their google search rankings. When they get a link from Forbes, or a blogger like Andrew Sullivan--who is like Patient Zero for many of these infographics--Google thinks they must be providing valuable information. Infographics are so good at getting this kind of attention that web marketing people spend a lot of time writing articles about how you can use them to boost your SEO (search engine optimization). 那些不知其所以然的博客作者们正在利用这些信息图来抬升自己的谷歌搜索排名。当他们从福布斯网站上或者是从安德鲁·沙利文（他对这些信息图抱有像对《第一感染源》那样的喜爱之情）等人的博客上获得一个链接时，谷歌就会认为他们提供的信息一定是有价值的。正是因为信息图能够又快又好地吸引流量，因此网络营销从业者也为此花费很多时间撰写文章，告诉你怎样使用信息图来实现搜索引擎优化（SEO）。 Every time you use an infographic from creditloan dot com, you're helping to send some poor fool into the arms of a debt consolidation scheme that is quite likely to leave them worse off than they were when they were merely drowning in consumer debt. 每当你引用来自“信用贷款”网站上的信息图时，你等于是在把一帮可怜的傻瓜推入债务重组计划的怀抱中去——这些所谓的计划很有可能不但无法起到救助作用，反而让那些原本只不过是面临消费者债务的人们陷入更加糟糕的窘境。 Obviously, debt consolidation lenders do not have any particular incentive to provide accurate, well researched data to the public. In fact, quite the opposite. Actual facts (biking is a good idea, but it's not very well correlated with either national obesity rates, or air pollution redution) are messy. Extreme lies, on the other hand, are attention grabbing. (OMG, we spend more on prison than Princeton!) I don't think it's a coincidence that the infographics that go viral so frequently seem to be the ones with serious factual problems. 显然，对这些提供债务重组的贷款人来说，并没有什么特别的动力去促使他们向公众提供准确而又经得起充分考验的数字。事实上，情况恰好相反。真正的事实是容易被忽略的（骑自行车的确是件好事情，但它没有好到跟降低国家肥胖率、减少空气质量污染有那么地相关）；另一方面，剑走偏锋的谎言却往往能够夺人眼球（我的天哪，我们花在监狱上的钱比普林斯顿大学还要多！）。我觉得这并不是一种巧合，这些病毒式迅速传开来的信息图似乎在某种程度上影射了严重的现实问题。 So before you pick up that infographic, give it a good, hard look. Is it from a site with no real reason to be publishing it? Do some quick mental math checks make the "data" look pretty unlikely? Have the sources been made deliberately hard to check? If so, take your hand off the mouse before you post it to facebook, your blog, or your favorite email list. Remember: only you can prevent viral media from spreading. 因此，当你看到一张信息图的时候，请先仔细、严格地检查一遍。它的出处是不是一个没什么合理原因会发表这张图的网站？简单做一下快速心算，是不是就能验证图中的有些“数据”似乎是不太可能的？数据来源是不是故意隐藏得很深，使你很难去核实查证？如果是这样的话，请停下你的鼠标，请不要把它发布到社交网站、博客或者常用邮件列表里去。请记住，只有你才能阻止这些病毒式媒介的传播。 This Christmas, let's all give the world the gift of better data. 今年圣诞节之际，让我们大家一起，用更优质的数据来赠与这个世界。
【作者简介】梅甘·麦卡德尔（Megan McArdle）：《大西洋月刊》资深编辑，主笔商业与经济领域，曾就职于三家初创公司、一家咨询公司、一家投资银行、零点公司（Ground Zero）灾难恢复部门以及《经济学人》。 版权声明： 本译文仅用于学习和交流目的。非商业转载请注明译者、出处，并保留文章在译言的完整链接。 |
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