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if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything

if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything proverb: statistics can be manipulated to support any conclusion.

Proverb

if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything

  1. Statistics can be manipulated to support any conclusion.

Origin of if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything

This phrase was coined by economist Ronald Coase. A closely related sentence had been published in Alfred Sauvy's book L'Opinion publique (The public opinion, éd. Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1961, p. 100): The figures are innocent people who, under solicitation, under torture, very quickly confess what is asked of them, even if it means retracting later. (Les chiffres sont des innocents qui, sous la sollicitation, sous la torture, avouent très vite ce qu'on leur demande, quitte à se rétracter plus tard.)

Questions about if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything

What does if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything mean?
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything means statistics can be manipulated to support any conclusion.
What part of speech is if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything?
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything is a proverb.

Words near if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything in the dictionary

  1. if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
  2. if you please
  3. if you say so
  4. if you see something, say something
  5. if you see what I mean
  6. if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything
  7. if you want a thing done well, do it yourself
  8. if you want peace, prepare for war
  9. if you will
  10. if you're not Dutch, you're not much
  11. if you've got it, flaunt it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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