A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World Before the Truth Puts On its Shoes

Noah Smith, who is generally well informed, kind of jumps the shark when he suggests that the problem with police is a lack of college degrees.

I don't see why this would work for cops when it never worked for journalists.

That was not what caught my eye though.  What caught my eye was that he cited an egregiously bad study of policing in the United States to suggest that there are too few police in the United States, and this is why we have so many incarcerated.

The study is so bad that I cannot ascribe incompetence from it, I have to ascribe a actual malice.  It's the academic equivalent of click-baiting.

They start with claim that there are 697,195 cops in the US.  This ignores every law federal enforcement officer, (FBI, DEA, CBP, US Marshall, etc) as well as private police forces (Private security, college police forces, etc.)

The US Census data gives 1,227,788 law enforcement, and Wikipedia gives 900K.

It really is remarkable how something can be deeply and transparently flawed can enter the zeitgeist so quickly.