Liberal-minded statistics?

May 2, 2008 4:13 AM

My boyfriend needs to find some statistics for a research paper. Specifically, pro-vegan, pro-environmentalist, anti-war, or other such statistics. Preferably all gathered in one place.

We need hard facts - in the vein of those presented in "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins (for example, the statistics involving the water and grain used to feed livestock and how that detracts from feeding third-world starving nations) - but more current. As far as anti-war, looking for things such as the cost of war per day compared with what America as a country puts towards education and/or environmental issues yearly, etc.

posted by jitterbug perfume to law & government (12 comments total)

Check out the National Priorities Project for war costs. The Tradeoffs section, which tells you how much war spending cost your state in, say, affordable housing is nifty. Otherwise they have charts, quick reports, etc.
posted by sneakin at 4:25 AM on May 2, 2008

you could hire a researcher to collect them for you.
posted by krautland at 4:55 AM on May 2, 2008

For an economic analysis of what the Iraq war has cost so far, see The Three Trillion Dollar War.
posted by flabdablet at 5:02 AM on May 2, 2008

Aside from what the war costs, do you have anything in particular that you want? "Statistics that argue for X" without more detail, a point of comparison, etc. is pretty impossible.

For example, you might think that cattle generating N pounds of CO2 for one pound of flesh is a pro-vegan statistic. But it wouldn't be convincing or relevant to someone who thought a japanese-style diet which just has very little beef is a better alternative than no beef ever.

You have to have a hypothesis, an idea, or an argument before you look for the right data.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 5:42 AM on May 2, 2008

If all the statistics were already gathered in one place (in, say, a research paper) then your boyfriend wouldn't have much to do, now would he? The whole point of a research paper is to collect disparate information in order to support a hypothesis.

You might find some useful world/nation statistics at NationMaster. I find it quite useful on occasion.
posted by mbatch at 6:53 AM on May 2, 2008

If you're looking for the most efficient method of food production that provides people with a complete diet, I read an interesting paper that argues for pisciculture (fish farming) over soybeans or other protein crops. The argument goes like this; Soybeans (or another crop) are a relatively low yield crop, so it takes a lot of land and input to produce a unit of edible protein from soybeans. Fish are very efficient at converting food to protein and fish protein is converted very efficiently in the human body. Grain crops have a much higher yield than soybeans, so it turns out that growing grain crops and feeding them to fish to make protein is more resource (and land?) efficient than growing soybeans. Fish farming currently has its set of environmental problems, but it has a lot of potential for being integrated with fowl or swine farming to create a more efficient, sustainable process where waste is reused. The majority of U.S. soybean farming at this point is traditional industrial agriculture with all of the associated environmental problems. This thesis can of course be wrong, and if you're unwilling to look beyond a purely vegan approach you probably aren't interested.

I'll post the paper or anything similar if I happen to recall where I found it. This was a research paper with actual data collection and analysis, not an opinion piece.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 6:56 AM on May 2, 2008

I don't know what class this is for, but I hope it's not a science class. The scientific method involves formulating a hypothesis, then seeing if the numbers support that or not, not finding numbers that support your position.

That said, here are some data from the EPA on pesticides and the USDA's agricultural statistics report.
posted by desjardins at 7:06 AM on May 2, 2008

Yeah, I was trying to be slightly subtle in my first post, but desjardins came out and said it; your approach is unscientific.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 7:33 AM on May 2, 2008

I would tell your boyfriend to be careful. If this is for an academic exercise, he is going to be shooting himself in the foot. Any source that claims to have a collection of ideologically-driven statistics has already cherry-picked numbers to further their agenda (whether right or left-wing), and your beau is going to be further cherry picking from that subset.

Unless he is in the best of graces with the professor (or the school has no standards), a paper written using such a backward method (foregone conclusion -> cherry-picked data -> hypothesis) wouldn't make it past even a lenient TA grader.

Oh well, best of luck in any case!
posted by Willie0248 at 7:43 AM on May 2, 2008

Unless he is in the best of graces with the professor (or the school has no standards)

Willie0248 - I suspect the number of schools in the U.S. at which this practice would be completely acceptable (or, would at least make it past the TA) is much higher than I'd care to know.. But maybe I'm a cynic?
posted by mbatch at 8:44 AM on May 2, 2008

He could look around indymedia
posted by saxamo at 8:57 AM on May 2, 2008

Indymedia is a source of news and opinion pieces, not useful statistics produced through careful research. If your boyfriend is in college, he should have access to his library's electronic resources, which should include invaluable research repositories such as Web of Science and JStore. The research papers he turns up by searching these archives will not simply present an ideology with some supporting statistics; that isn't the nature of good research. He'll have to do some careful reading and comparison while keeping an open mind. I'm guessing his existing ideology will, on the whole, be reinforced if he can let go of it as a dogma and do some objective investigation.

As someone who works professionally in promoting resource efficiency and sustainability, I find the nature of this question frustrating. Arguing from ideology, you will lose against someone arguing poorly from a scientific perspective. The scientific argument behind your ideology is supported by better research, but you lose if you cannot articulate the logical underpinnings first.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 9:35 AM on May 2, 2008