One of my textbooks in college was “How to Lie With Statistics.” It served as a valued reminder that you should always ask “What’s behind these numbers?” when you see a statistic. And about 46 percent of the statistics I see on television, I definitely don’t believe.

          So it’s worth noting an impressive effort by Village Voice Media to take a look at the statistics presented by the Women’s Funding Network about growth in online sex trafficking of underage girls.

          In a 3,200 word article, Nick Pinto of City Pages in Minneapolis and Village Voice Media last week dissected the research done for Women’s Funding Network and several other groups.

          The research, which showed increases of up to 65 percent in the number of underage girls trafficked online, was promoted by Deborah Richardson of the Women’s Funding Network. But VVM argued that the research, which was quoted in USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald and others, was essentially bogus.

          “None of the media that published Richardson’s astonishing numbers bothered to examine the study at the heart of Richardson’s claim. If they had, they would have found what we did after asking independent experts to examine the research. It’s junk science.

          “After all, the numbers are all guesses.

          “The data are based merely on looking at photos on the Internet. There is no science.”

          VVM interviewed several research analysts and experts who all said the same thing about the numbers, in one form or another.

          “The methodology that they used doesn’t really show the numbers that back it up,” VVM quoted Sgt. John Bandemer of the St. Paul, Minn., police, who heads a human trafficking task force. “We take it with a grain of salt.”

           Clearly, Village Voice Media is not dispassionate about the subject. VVM publishes Backpage.com, now the No. 1 site for prostitution advertising in the U.S., and earns millions more each year from print advertising for escorts and other sex workers in its 13 print alternative weeklies. However, the company covered that up front with a straightforward disclosure statement:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Village Voice Media, which owns this newspaper, owns the classified site Backpage.com. In addition to used cars, jobs, and couches, readers can also find adult ads on Backpage; for this reason, Women’s Funding Network and their allies have often called attention to the site, sometimes going so far as to call for its closure.

Certainly we have a stake in this discussion. And we do not object to those who suggest an apparent conflict of interest. We sat quietly and did not respond as the WFN held symposiums across America—from Seattle to Miami—denouncing Backpage. Indeed, we were never asked for response.

But then we looked at the “science” and the media’s willingness to regurgitate, without question, these incredible statistics. In the interest of a more informed discussion, we decided to write.

              Pinto’s piece explains how the research was done, by the Schapiro Group of Atlanta: “[It] came up with a novel, if not very scientific, method for tabulating juvenile prostitutes: They counted pictures of young-looking women on online classified sites.” Quoting from the methodology section of the research, Pinto says 38 percent of all “young-looking girls” on the site were assigned a value of being under 18.

               “This is dense gibberish posing as statistical analysis,” Pinto writes. He interviewed Beth Schapiro of the Schapiro Group, and quotes her and a colleague at length about the research, saying her explanations cause “cognitive whiplash” because she offers two contradictory interpretations of the information.

Any reporter who had read the methodology of the Schapiro report would have been left with doubts, and any reporter who followed up would probably have been treated to the same baffling circuit of non-answers. The fact that the study’s findings continue to be rebroadcast in news outlets across the country suggests that not one reporter has bothered to read the study about which they are writing.

“You see this kind of thing a lot, unfortunately,” says Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute who writes frequently about statistics. “The kind of skepticism that reporters apply to a statement by a politician just doesn’t get applied to studies.”

              Whether you believe there are lots of underage prostitutes plying their trade in the United States or you believe there aren’t, or whether you don’t care, this article (far more comprehensive and well-reported than I can include here) is worth reading for a look at how numbers can be skewed to fit a wide range of purposes.

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               A few weeks back, Village Voice Media objected about our coverage of their prostitution advertising. In a letter to the AIM Group, their attorney argued, among other complaints, that any prostitution ads placed on Backpage.com are permitted under the federal Communications Decency Act, and that VVM is legally entitled to publish them. Not only are they correct (as long as the ads have not been subject to pre-publication review), we have frequently noted that Craigslist was fully protected by the CDA in its publication of adult services ads (and housing ads, as well). But we haven’t made that point specifically about Backpage.com and VVM. We should, and we do so now. And we will continue to do so in the future.

             We have also on several occasions referred pejoratively to former Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, now a U.S. Senator, and South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and their comments regarding adult-services ads on Craigslist and Backpage. While they’re entitled to personal opinions, as anyone is, we’ve made clear that we believe the use of their offices to attack legally protected advertising is inappropriate.

             We’ve offered Village Voice Media and Backpage space on our site and in CIR to comment on their concerns about our coverage; about their efforts to work with attorneys general, NGOs and other organizations to combat trafficking in children or any other illegal activities, or about their new efforts to improve the safety and security of their users (which we derisively dismissed in a post on our site a few months back). They’re welcome – nay, strongly encouraged – to respond. A reasoned, rational and intelligent discourse about these issues is important to the classified advertising community at large, not just to the AIM Group and to Village Voice Media.