"...damned lies, and statistics" earlier attestation claim

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>:

> On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Stephen Goranson wrote:
>
>> died to early to qualify; or Giffen was mistaken. The putative
>> earlier saying
>> source, about witnesses who are liars, damned (or outrageous) liars, and
>> experts/scientific experts/expert witnesses, is, at least, attested earlier
>> than 1892, e.g., by Thomas Henry Huxley in 5 Dec 1885.
>
> Thanks for the interesting information you present in this posting; I will
> look into it further.  I'm not sure if I have the 1885 Huxley citation
> about witnesses; can you supply the bibliographical details, please?

1) 5 Dec. 1885 "Talked politics, scandal, and the three classes of
witnesses--liars, d-----d liars, and experts." From T.H. Huxley's minutes of the
meeting of the x Club, a dinner club, quoted in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry
Huxley (edited by his son Leonard Huxley; London: Macmillan and Co., 1900, vol.
1, p. 258).

2) Fred, you wrote in YBQ 208 that Disraeli "...may have had a reputation as
being a critic of statistics." Do you have documentation for this? The fact
that Twain's attribution to Disraeli has been long well known, yet no Disraeli
text has been found (including by the Disraeli papers editors), may perhaps
suggest that Bagehot or Courtney or another may be a more likely source.

3) Another claimed attribution: School Statistics and Publicity by Carter
Alexander (googlebook; Boston etc., 1919, p.90): They quote the old statement of
Bagehot: "There are three kinds of lies--lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Stephen

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org