Apple’s big lie about job creation, and other bogus claims

Apple has created or supported more than 500,000 jobs. Phishing attacks cost the economy $234 billion a year. And giving social and mobile CRM tools to salespeople makes them 26.4 percent more productive. All these preposterous numbers are floating around the Web these days, peddled by PR people who count on easy hooks to sell their products, burnish their clients’ images, or advance an agenda.

Apple’s attempt at statistical flimflammery is the most offensive because it’s a transparent attempt to change the public conversation about Apple from the question of atrocious labor practices in the Chinese factories that make iPhones and iPads to job creation. (Of course, yesterday’s announcement of “the new iPad” will help in the diversion as well.)

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The misuse of statistics and the preparation of allegedly scientific surveys designed to fool is spread across the Web by the axis of fakery: tech companies, PR agencies, and gullible (or feckless) journalists. Taking a cue from our friends at NPR’s “Car Talk,” I’ll periodically call “Bogus!” on the most egregious examples of statistical and survey fakery by tech companies and their agents. I encourage you to spot them and forward them to Tech’s Bottom Line for the ridicule they deserve.

Bogus security tales and phish stories

One of the most persistent offenders is the security industry, particularly the companies that sell antimalware products to consumers. Not a week passes without at least one, and usually more, attempts by PR folks to sell me on a story about a terrible new security threat.

Case in point, the subject line of an email sent to me this week: “233.4 million phish/day costs $230B/year.” The email came from a PR person representing Agari, which sells — you guessed it — email security products, including antiphishing tools.

I won’t mention her name — I don’t pick on individuals unless they’re CEOs — but when I pushed the PR person to provide substantiation, she said, “Cisco did a study a while ago, but we can’t find the link.” She also mentioned another unavailable study, by IID and Wachovia, that purports to show each successful phishing episode knocks nearly $2,000 off the brand equity of companies that are hit and costs IT departments $780 to clean up after each attack. A few minutes later, she backed off a bit, saying in another email that the annual cost of phishing is just $98 billion. So which is it?

Apple’s bogus labor study Here’s what Apple posted on its website last week: “Throughout our history, Apple has created entirely new products — and entirely new industries — by focusing on innovation. As a result, we’ve created or supported more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers: from the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door.”

Breaking down those stats, Apple says it is responsible for 304,000 current jobs across a wide array of industries, including engineering, manufacturing, and transportation, as well as another 210,000 in the “app economy.”

Apple actually employs 47,000 people in the United States, so where did the other 450,000 come from? Multipliers, a standard statistical tool that economists use to derive the effects of spending (or not spending) on the economy. But as you learned a long time ago, garbage in equals garbage out.

Take, for example, this statement: “This figure [the jobs number] also includes workers in Texas who manufacture processors for iOS products, Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone, and FedEx and UPS employees.”

Wow. Sure, delivery companies derive revenue when its drivers drop off your new iPad. But — duh! — they’d be working anyway delivering books from Amazon.com and towels from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Do Corning employees do nothing but make glass for the iPhone, and do those folks in the bunny suits in Texas only work to make CPUs for Apple? Obviously not. But those are the kind of assumptions built into that projection. Speaking of projections, Apple assumes that its new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., will create 7,000 jobs.

Similarly, it assumes that “the 248,000 registered iOS developers in the U.S.” develop only for Apple. I seriously doubt that. What’s more, the success of iOS has obviously had a very negative effect on developers of other operating systems, such as BlackBerry, and those folks are out of work or now developing for Apple. How big is the actual gain? We can’t tell, though I’m sure there is one.

I could go on at some length, but I’m sure you see my point. What’s more, the timing of this release makes it all the clearer that Apple is desperately trying to clean up its badly tarnished corporate image.

Apple does create lots of jobs and makes real contributions to our economy. Inflating those numbers for the sake of favorable PR simply makes the company look petty, dishonest, and — maybe worst of all — contemptuous of the smarts of its customers. Likewise, security companies make products that are needed, but as their products have become more commoditized, they increasingly rely on scare tactics and bogus studies to sell their services.

If it sounds too good to be true … Generally, bogus numbers dazzle us with their sheer size. But there’s another tactic to watch out for: amazingly exact numbers.

Witness Nucleus Research, which claims that mobile CRM makes salespeople more productive. It doesn’t give just a ballpark estimate; it presents a precise number: 26.4 percent.

I read through the study and saw lots of anecdotal evidence that mobile and social CRM is helpful to salespeople. I believe it — but how it derived that number is something we simply don’t know, nor can we tell who paid for the study. One could guess. 

Don’t be fooled by the axis of fakery.

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This article, “Apple’s big lie about job creation, and other bogus claims,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.