Compared with ve years ago, do you think there has been a change in the number of people receiving
compensation payments for personal injuries?
* Respondents who answered ‘Don’t know’ have been excluded from chart.
CHART 2
28 50
29 A lot more people making false claims
A few more people
Virtually no change Fewer people
%
Compared with ve years ago, do you think there has been a change in the number of people making false claims?
* Respondents who answered ‘Don’t know’ have been excluded from chart.
that a lawyer’s cases all have the same value, and require the same level of input in terms of hours worked, and other costs. Arguably a lawyer could lose a small number of very complex cases and still be out of pocket because they were worth more in fees than the income generated from cases he or she won.
Strictly speaking E is safe to infer only if on average all cases cost about the same to pursue.
And so we come to F: ‘Claims being pursued for personal injury have increased significantly since the introduction of conditional-fee agreements.’ By now it should be clear that this cannot be inferred from Doc 2 either. You may have thought that F could be inferred because it seems so likely to be true, given that conditional-fee agreements allow people to make claims without having to pay anything. In that respect F is like B. But F can only be inferred if it is also assumed that there have been no other changes which might have had a reverse effect. Nor can F be inferred without assuming that lawyers now take on more cases than they did before the introduction of no-win no-fee. Doc 2 provides no information to justify either of these assumptions. In fact, the note about E in the previous paragraph suggests that lawyers may be much more selective than they were, since they have more to lose. F could, quite realistically, be false, and public opinion seriously flawed.
The clear warning to take from the discussion above is that many seemingly reasonable inferences were in fact unsafe. Some of the claims may be true, and may be found to be so after further investigation. But Doc 2, as it stands, lacks the hard data we would need for drawing conclusions such as B, C or F.
Popular opinion
Many people hold the opinion that there is a growing ‘compensation culture’, with many more claims being made for injuries – real or otherwise – than there were, say, five or ten years ago. Many also take the view that a lot of the claims are bogus, or fraudulent, especially the infamous ‘whiplash’ injury, following
Commentary
The first point to make is that the data concerns public opinion. The first of the three claims is therefore clearly supported by the data. (As a matter of interest, it is the conclusion that the researchers drew
themselves.) Only 1 in 20 people thought that there had been no change. Well over half thought that the change was substantial in favour of more people receiving payments.
This indicates a ‘widespread and strong belief’, and makes A a safe conclusion. The question of whether the sample was representative need not concern you, as you were told to assume that the figures are accurate and well researched.
Claim B is a more direct interpretation of the data, and simple arithmetic shows that it too is a safe inference. Claim A is true because claim B is true.
Claim C is more complex and more
interesting. It would seem reasonable to argue that if there are more people receiving
payments, there are more claims being made.
But ultimately C rests on the assumption that Take some time to think about and/or discuss
the following questions, before reading the commentaries that follow.
1 Which of the following are supported by the information in Chart 1? (The answer may be any, none or all.)
Assume that the data is accurate and that the sample of people questioned is representative of the population.
A There is a widespread and strong belief that more people are receiving compensation for personal injuries now than five years ago.
B 87% of those responding to the survey believe that there are more people receiving payments for personal injury compensation than there were five years ago.
C Claims being pursued for personal injury have increased significantly in the past five years.
Activity
CHART 3
64 12 8
7 Disagree strongly
% Disagree slightly
%
67 13
8
65 12 8
8 5
7 5
9 5
Neither
%
Agree slightly
%
Agree strongly
% All adults
Those who watch daytime TV
Those who have recently seen a personal injury claims ad
‘I might be tempted to make an exaggerated claim for a personal injury, even if I didn't have a strong case for compensation.’ To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
*Respondents who answered ‘Don’t know’ have been excluded from chart.
putting in false claims, and that would explain the rise in the number of claims generally.
These are plausible hypotheses, but they are poorly supported by the data in the charts. The fact that one thing would explain another if it were true, does not not permit us to infer that it is true. In some circumstances this can be a powerful argument; but as you discovered in Chapter 2.10, it can also be a dangerous one.
(Remember the Bayside fish restaurant. Just because food poisoning would explain why a restaurant has closed, it does not follow that food poisoning occurred or came from the restaurant.) In the present case, just because cheating would explain rising claims, it does not mean there is widespread cheating. There are many other equally plausible reasons why claims could be increasing in frequency, if they are.
3 Does the data in Chart 3 contradict the data in Chart 2?
Activity
Commentary
A comparison of Charts 2 and 3 is very interesting. According to Chart 2, most people evidently believe that there is an increased level of dishonest claiming going on, and half of those questioned believe that there is a big increase. But if Chart 3 is anything to go by, very few people say that they would so much as exaggerate a claim. Even those who watch daytime TV (which, we were told, carries a lot of advertising by the so-called ‘ambulance chasers’), or who have seen a claims
advertisement recently, say they are no more likely to claim than the general sample of the population. Remember, too, that being tempted to do something and actually doing it are two different things. Of the 13% of all adults who said they might be tempted at all, how many would have gone as far as making a false claim?
there really are more payments being made;
or, in other words, that the widespread belief expressed by those questioned is correct. It is this step which is the problem: reasoning from the evidence that most people believe
something, to the conclusion that it is true or probable, is a classic fallacy known by the Latin argumentum ad populum. If you prefer more modern names there are plenty to choose from: appeal to popular opinion, appeal to consensus, appeal to the majority, the authority of the many over the few. The weakness of this argument is nicely captured by the old joke that 40,000 lemmings can’t all be wrong. (The joke is that every so often whole colonies of lemmings are believed to run to the edge of the nearest cliff and plunge to their deaths!) C therefore is not a safe inference.
2 Suppose the majority view represented in Chart 1 is correct. Would it follow that there has been a change in the number of people making false claims?
Activity
Commentary
This is another complex question. What makes it so is that it is hypothetical. We don’t know whether the opinions represented in Chart 1 are true or not. The question is: If the sample of public opinion is right and there has been a big increase in claims, can we infer that a significant number of people are making false claims?
Why might this be true? Well, if it is correct, as it is widely believed, that there are more people getting money for injuries, others may see this as a way of getting some money themselves. It is a sad fact that there are dishonest people who will seize such opportunities. Then again, it might be the other way round: that with the help of no-win no-fee agreements more people have begun
claims. But even if that widespread belief (shown by Chart 2) is unfounded, it is not because the data in Chart 3 contradicts it.
It is perfectly rational for people to hold the two views: (1) that there are more cheats than there were; but (2) that they wouldn’t cheat themselves. These do not conflict; so nor do the two sets of data.
Before answering the next question, there is a further short document to read:
We simply cannot say. We also have to wonder whether those questioned in the Chart 3 survey would all have answered truthfully.
There is no contradiction here. If 13% of all adults are willing to admit to being tempted to exaggerate a claim, that could result in a considerable and increasing number of actual claims. It could certainly be a sufficient number to explain why many believe that there was a significant increase in dishonest