I'm sure I'm perching to the choir here but we must remember, if you are an unscrupulous individual, as most in power are, you can fake a study to show almost anything. And since most people don't know how to read these studies or how to spot problems with them, the public isn't going to be reading them or even understanding the issues within them if they do. They just hear what the media tell them: There was a study, it's title is this, and we say it's correct. They don't hear that later on the study was retracted because it was found to be fraudulent. The media won't report that. Studies are only as good as the people conducting them.
I'm sure I'm perching to the choir here but we must remember, if you are an unscrupulous individual, as most in power are, you can fake a study to show almost anything. And since most people don't know how to read these studies or how to spot problems with them, the public isn't going to be reading them or even understanding the issues within them if they do. They just hear what the media tell them: There was a study, it's title is this, and we say it's correct. They don't hear that later on the study was retracted because it was found to be fraudulent. The media won't report that. Studies are only as good as the people conducting them.
Always remember one of the books on Bill Gates' reading list is "How to Lie with Statistics".