As a teenager, I loved reading How to Lie with Statistics. Ben Goldacre, an epidemiologist and bestselling author of Bad Science, has written admiringly of how “The Huff” had written a “ripper.” The American writer Charles Wheelan describes his book Naked Statistics as “an homage” to Huff’s “classic.” The respected journal Statistical Science organized a Huff retrospective 50 years after its publication. It’s a marvel of statistical communication. The book deserves the popularity and the praise. Published in 1954 by a little-known American freelance journalist named Darrell Huff, this wisecracking, cynical little book immediately received a rave review from the New York Times and went on to become perhaps the most popular book on statistics ever published, selling well over a million copies. You’d certainly have gotten that impression from reading How to Lie with Statistics.

You can “prove” anything with statistics, it seems-even that storks deliver babies. While there’s a clear pattern in the data, that pattern does not mean that storks cause babies to appear. Small countries such as Albania and Denmark have few babies and few storks. Large European countries such as Germany, Poland, and Turkey are home to many babies and many storks. Perhaps you have already guessed the trick. In fact, a scientific paper has been published with the title “Storks Deliver Babies (p = 0.008).” Without getting too technical, all those zeros tell us that this is not a coincidence. The pattern is easily strong enough to pass a traditional hurdle for publication in an academic journal. More storks, more babies fewer storks, fewer babies.

Across Europe, there’s a remarkably strong relationship. Take a look at the estimated population of storks in each country, and then at the number of babies born each year. You know the old story about storks delivering babies? It’s true. The truly genuine problem… does not consist of proving something false but in proving that the authentic object is authentic.

How can you lie with statistics