Submission + - Is Confirmation Bias Driving Elon Musk to Jump to Sensationalistic Conclusions? 2
theodp writes: "According to the Social Security database," said Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chief Elon Musk in a tweet that's been viewed 54.2+ million times (and counting), "these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security." In lieu of presenting a thoughtful, evidenced-based audit report, Musk made his case with a couple of ROTFL icons and a single screenshot of a simple table that seems designed to suggest nearly 400 million people — more than the population of the United States — are receiving Social Security benefits. That "there are FAR more 'eligible' social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA," Musk added, "might be the biggest fraud in history." Never mind that Social Security Beneficiary Statistics published by the SSA are much lower than those floated without explanation by Musk. Or that non-citizens including students and workers are also issued Social Security Cards (including Tesla's non-citizen workers) and can be entitled to benefits.
There are undoubtedly big fraud problems to solve at Social Security, just as there are at Musk-founded PayPal and other organizations. But Musk may want to take steps to help ensure that DOGE's work is driven more by informed consideration of evidence and less by jumping to conclusions based on confirmation bias. "Narrowly pursuing an investigation into what you initially suspect doesn’t just trip up scientists," warns 5 Ways Auditors Can Overcome Confirmation Bias. "Confirmation bias—one of five common judgment biases—has the potential to lead auditors up the wrong path just as easily. [...] The deeper one gets into investigating a particular hypothesis, the more difficult it becomes to consider contradictory ones. Rather, it’s common to seek evidence that supports suspicions and overlook data that don’t. Result: You’ve confirmed your bias—bypassing both the scientific method and best practices in auditing."
Writing about the resignation of acting SSA Commissioner Michelle King after members of Musk's DOGE team sought access to the agency's data, the New York Times reports that Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner of the SSA in the Biden administration, said the claims of Musk and his team about the agency were not true. “They’re just making” things up, he said, referring to Musk’s suggestion that more than a million people in the Social Security database are in the 150 to 159 age range.
There are undoubtedly big fraud problems to solve at Social Security, just as there are at Musk-founded PayPal and other organizations. But Musk may want to take steps to help ensure that DOGE's work is driven more by informed consideration of evidence and less by jumping to conclusions based on confirmation bias. "Narrowly pursuing an investigation into what you initially suspect doesn’t just trip up scientists," warns 5 Ways Auditors Can Overcome Confirmation Bias. "Confirmation bias—one of five common judgment biases—has the potential to lead auditors up the wrong path just as easily. [...] The deeper one gets into investigating a particular hypothesis, the more difficult it becomes to consider contradictory ones. Rather, it’s common to seek evidence that supports suspicions and overlook data that don’t. Result: You’ve confirmed your bias—bypassing both the scientific method and best practices in auditing."
Writing about the resignation of acting SSA Commissioner Michelle King after members of Musk's DOGE team sought access to the agency's data, the New York Times reports that Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner of the SSA in the Biden administration, said the claims of Musk and his team about the agency were not true. “They’re just making” things up, he said, referring to Musk’s suggestion that more than a million people in the Social Security database are in the 150 to 159 age range.
