Enough with the unsourced statistics.

This is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people:

When you cite a source for a fact or statistic, and that source doesn't say where they got it... you haven't actually cited a source.

Maybe that seems obvious to you, but it sure isn't obvious to a whole lot of people sharing advice and statistics in presentations and on LinkedIn and other social platforms.

You've probably seen factoids and stats like "people today have an attention span lower than a goldfish's." They get repeated endlessly to the point where they're taken as gospel... yet when you try to substantiate them, you discover they're founded in myths, hoaxes, misunderstandings, wishful thinking or marketing hype.

That goldfish "fact", for instance: there's nothing to back it up.

The statistic I've been seeing lately says that "the average web user spends 88% more time on a site with video." Huge if true, right?

Except today I went searching for a source via our good friends at Google. I tracked hit after hit, and found one of three things every time:

• a dead end — that is, a site that just stated the statistic without mentioning a source,
• a site linking to one of those dead ends,
• or a site linking to a site linking to a site... (repeat as necessary) ...linking to a dead end.

And when you think about it, that statistic has a definite whiff of bullshit to begin with. Is the comparison between comparable websites, or are they including, say, Facebook, YouTube and Netflix (or, cough, porn sites) to pump up the results for video? How big a sample did they use? What kinds of viewers are we talking about, and how do they define an "average viewer"? Who is behind this stat, and are they credible? And the biggest question of all, how the hell would they know?

Look. maybe there really is a source out there for that statistic. Maybe it's based on a robust study with a large sample size involving comparable sites with findings that hold true for a wide range of content. But I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Thing is, that's just what we're often asking audiences to do when we cite statistics like these, whether we mean to or not. Stats like these have a heavy implication that people should change the way they spend resources — time, attention, money, energy. And organizations with scarce resources are getting stampeded into doing things like pivoting to video on really flimsy evidence, often from extremely self-serving sources.

There are two morals to the story.

1) Don't base your strategy on posts like "101 social media statistics." Don't let your boss or ED or board member push you into doing it, either.

And 2) Please, please, please cite the original sources for your statistics. Can't find the original source? Then don't cite the statistic, no matter how compelling it is. Got a source, but it's dubious as hell? Then, unless you want to be just as dubious, don't cite the statistic.

Or, to put it another way, treat an unsourced statistic the way your mom taught you to treat stuff you found on the ground when you were a kid: Don't put it in your mouth; you don't know where it's been.

?And don't pass it on to someone else.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash